About this Site

X-Club Results
A bold new initiative was undertaken in 2012 with X-Clubs. Initially, all clubs using Bob Fearn's Compass scoring system with or without electronic scoring but with access to a dealing machine were invited to use the same deals in synchronous sessions. This simple idea has huge implications. Clubs using scoring programs other than Compass and even unaffiliated clubs are now also welcome to take part. Based on the software that was used for the 2012 Simultaneous Barometer Pairs, X-Clubs is able to score "across the field" when there are two or more result files to process. In 2016 Compass picked up the job of scoring the Babich NZ-Wide Simultaneous Pairs. This event attracts over 1000 pairs and used to take a week to score but is now generally done and dusted inside 12 hours - 90% of it with one hour. In 2016 James Ward of Leeds permitted free use of his amazing Pianola reporting for X-Clubs results. In 2019 Bob introduced an in-house grading system - X-Club Grades (XG) modelled on the EBU system - that allowed us to report handicapped results.

How it works:
Picture a number of clubs all playing the same hands on a Wednesday night. The result files get saved in special folders in Dropbox from where the X-Clubs software retrieves and processes them. Later that night you can see how you scored in a field of hundreds rather than tens of pairs. By 2016 over one quarter of all clubs in NZ were taking part.

Several benefits accrue:

  • Participating clubs do not have to worry about generating deals. These are supplied in several different formats for the whole season and access to them for Compass clubs is by using Dealer Assist while non-Compass clubs are supplied the whole season's deals for the sessions they play
  • Each deal comes with Makeable Contracts
  • Also supplied are pdf files of the Hand Records and Travelling Score Sheets
  • The task of dealing by machine at Compass clubs is greatly simplified - dealers select the file in Dealer Assist and click Deal Now. Hand records may be printed from Dealer Assist - and the user can easily apply titles to them
  • Non-Compass clubs call up their dealing program - eg Dealer4 - Load the designated file from wherever they store their season's dealer files and Deal
  • Even clubs without dealing machines may participate. If the first round of each session is given over to the manual dealing of the prescribed hands at each table, play may begin in earnest on the second round; the first being scored as a DNP. The Traveling Score Sheet with each board shows the hand record and makeable contracts. This feature lends so much more objectivity to postmortems at the table
  • Players who care to register their e-mail address via the Home page of this website can receive free Pianola reports after every game. The Pianola website stores players' history and analyses their performance over time
  • Of special benefit to smaller clubs is the fully-featured reporting you can see on this website. Click on a section to see how you rated playing those boards in a massive field. Click on your name and you see your Personal Score Sheet. Click on a board and it comes up with the Traveling Score Sheet for that board which shows not only the hand but also its makeable contracts.
  • For clubs without websites - Voila! - you have a web presence where you can see your results
  • The Ladder files contain handicap results. All columns in Ladder files are sortable by clicking on the column headers
  • The weekly Leagues tables summarise scores over the previous 50 weeks. They also include a column for XG Rating of over 2600 X-Club players who have played more than 15 sessions

But wait!! There's MORE .. much more: from 2019 there is a link on each handrecord that will take you to the BridgeSolver website where you can explore the most effective ways to play the best contracts available in each seat for the hand you're interested in.

Tin Tacks

  • 520 deals are generated for the whole season - ten deals per week, two per weekday: a Daytime set and an Evening set.
  • A simple naming system identifies which deals are to be used for which sessions
  • The syntax is a 2-digit Week Number based on the calendar week followed by a session code - MON, TUE, WED, THU, FRI for the Evening files; same names with a "D" appended for the Daytime files
  • Each participating club is set up with just the deal sets appropriate to that club's playing programme. If your club doesn't play Wednesday Daytimes then it won't need a WEDD set
  • For Compass users, a flag in ClubInfo Setup > Club Sessions tab - will indicate whether or not each session played at your club will be participating. Compass automatically posts the results file for those sessions to a Dropbox folder
  • Non-Compass clubs produce their usual XML file and copy it to a special Dropbox folder
  • Each club is still able to print and post its own results as normal
  • Results are harvested upon a certain deadline - usually by 6pm for Daytime deals and 11pm for Evening deals
  • After processing all available results across the field, the outcome is posted here to this site
  • The cost to you for all the above? ... thanks to the generosity of all the named suppliers it's all FREE


CompassMate Results
From time to time tournaments involving players from different clubs are run using Compass scoring with or withoutwireless scoring units. The results have often been hard to find .. as in cases where the host club does not have a website. This site is offered as a central repository for such events. Milan Durovic of Sydney, who provides web-based services for bridge clubs, is generously allowing us to post the results of Compass-scored tournaments on this site. Whether you join in the X-Clubs scheme or not, a link from your own website to the weekly or monthly results pages on this site will be of much interest to your members.