Amazing! Just four months ago, there was no way to win pigmented ACBL masterpoints online, other than the three annual Online Individual NABC robot tournaments. The most recent one just finished, by the way, with a record 3400 entries.
Black, Gold, Silver, Gold, Silver
We are in a nice rhythm of alternating gold and silver events at the end of each month. When the Covid-19 stay-at-home orders began, ACBL quickly invented the Support Your Club games and Virtual Private Clubs. You could play with many of the same familiar people from your local club, hang out afterwards for hand analysis with your local teachers, and have enough tables in your game via club alliances. Best of all, these games paid black points, at 150% the normal club rate.
In April we had the first massive online Gold Point Regional. For Memorial Day Weekend, we got the first Silver Linings Week (that was a tiring week). June gave us more Endless Summer Regional gold. Naturally, we are back to silver and the clubs.
Still Tied To Virtual Private Clubs
The silver point games are still tied to virtual private clubs. Unfortunately, the policy has been very confusing for many players. Just know that there is a massive amount of discussions behind the scenes going on between ACBL, club managers, and BBO to make the process as fair as possible.
For now, you should by default be allowed to play anywhere where you’ve played a face-to-face club game in the past 366 days. Each club is also allowed to invite a limited number of guests, but at least one member of the partnership should have played a face-to-face club game, and guests should not exceed 5% of players for the month.
New Default View Shows Eligible Games Only
Thankfully, they simplified the interface so you only see the club games where you are eligible to play. This ia huge improvement over previously taunting us with a massive list of games, none of which we can play. However, the new behavior also means you need to be more proactive if you aren’t on the list already. You won’t even know who to message or that the game exists, unless you find out about it from a friend or from the club directly.
Just like last time, our advice is not to wait until 10 minutes prior to a game to ask if you can just the guest list. Try playing a few games the week prior, just to iron out any issues.
Formula Pays Double Points
The awards this time will be a little bit lower. They are paying 0.2 points per table to first overall, which is double a normal club game. It is going to pay a little less than a STaC, especially for smaller games because a STaC has a fixed 1.875 point bounty prior to adding 0.1875 points per table. But it still pays more than a face-to-face club game, more than a 1.5x Support Your Club game, and did we mention it is silver points?
I look forward to clubs announcing a special schedule yet again, as we make it rain silver!
