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Vil's Hand of the Week

Board 5 from Wednesday 10th May. Dealer North and N/S vulnerable

A642
KQT65
A
AQT
T97
J9
KJT3
KJ96
KQ53
A2
9
875432
J8
8743
Q876542

First Cut - 46 of 60 NZW Clubs in by Midnight

Congratulations to Barry Jones & Jenny Millington of Hamilton. They topped a field of 998 pairs in the Babich 2016 NZ-Wide Pairs with a score of 68.63%, narrowly beating out two other pairs in the 68's. We started scoring at 11pm on the Friday night; most of the action was over by 1pm. On the Saturday morning we were still waiting for six clubs to get their data in or corrected, and the final scores were posted by 11:30am. Just a shade over 12 hours but, if all clubs had been successful in sending their results in, we could have wrapped it up in two hours. NB - the final club, for whom we waited another five hours, finally had to give up trying to produce their file. Sadly, it had gotten lost.

On behalf of all who took part I wish to send a huge vote of thanks to Bob Fearn, ex Tokoroa player now resident in Seattle. Compass scoring has been Bob's life's work and, like so many others involved with this game, he mostly does it all for love. In extending Compass X-Clubs scoring to handle this mighty job, Bob has provided an invaluable tool to Bridge in New Zealand.

Your club, too, can enjoy a similar scaled-down NZ-Wide Pairs by joining the 30-odd clubs that play X-Club deals every session. That's over one quarter of all NZ clubs playing the same deals simultaneously every day of the week. It's free and it's transparent while making life easier for your members. Ask anytime by using the Contact Us tab in the top meny bar.

Tips for viewing the NZ-Wide Pairs results:

  • Use the Wide View tab above
  • Search for names with CTRL-F
  • Click on any column header in a Ladder file to sort by that column

NZW Scorers Anna, Mike & Jan - Selfie. MIA - Bob Fearn in SeattleNZW Scorers Anna, Mike & Jan - Selfie. MIA - Bob Fearn in Seattle

Pianola has Landed ...

Fasten your seat belts, everyone, as X-Clubs brings you a fantastic new reporting tool!! X-Clubs players can now experience the next level of reporting for FREE thanks to the generosity of James Ward, founder and CEO of British firm Pianola, and the indefatigable efforts of Bob Fearn, author of Compass scoring. Click here to Register for Pianola results e-mails.

Vil Gravis on 17FRID

Friday Review

This deal came from a Friday afternoon session.
Board 6 Dealer E EW Vul

4
J7654
Q9
KQJ73
AQT75
Q2
AJ543
5
J9632
AKT3
KT2
9
K8
98
876
AT8642

Vil Gravis on 16WED

Wednesday Review 13
It is quite clear that many of our newer players have simply not got into the habit of THINKING about
the hands they play or defend. It really is crucial that you THINK and don't just play by instinct, or
according to the very basic 'rules' you have been taught, because simply playing your cards by taking
your tricks, or by following some simple guidelines will not give you the best results. This deal
provides a case in point.
Board 5 Dealer N NS Vul

AKQ842
J2
976
K2
T93
A9765
Q85
JT
6
K84
KJT42
Q754
J75
QT3
A3
A9863

Vil Gravis on 15WED

Wednesday Review 12
This week, a bit about everything: bidding, defence, and declarer play.
Board 8 Dealer W Nil Vul

QJ972
J3
9742
Q6
AK64
T985
K8742
T5
KQ4
AT865
A53
83
A762
KQJ3
JT9

X-Club Deals for 2016

The new season's deals have been available for some time. If yours is a non-Compass club requiring the deals please use the Contact form to request them in the usual form.

Compass clubs now have the ability to access their deals on demand using the newly-released Dealer Assist (DA) module within Compass scoring.

The new work flow for dealers will be like this:

  1. Rostered dealer opens Compass and chooses More Menu Items ... from the side menu strip.
  2. Selects Dealer Assist to see a screen like this showing the current Week Number and any deal files already retrieved for future weeks. On start-up, Compass will have automatically loaded the files for the next two to three weeks:
  3. Dealer highlights a session and clicks on Deal Hands Now. Dealer4 opens automatically with the file already loaded. Proceed as normal with the dealing.
  4. When finished the dealer can click on Print PDFs to automatically print Handrecords and/or Traveling Score Sheets.

Also:

  • {extra cool!) If your club wishes to put the sponsors' or competition names at the top of the handrecords it has just got wa-ay simpler to do that. Highlight a session and click to Add Heading to Hand Record PDF. The handrecord appears - position the cursor where you want the text to appear, right-click and paste. Bingo! By double-clicking in the box you get to edit the text - font style, font size, wording - if you want. Close and save then print. Magical stuff, Bob!
  • Should you wish to retrieve any deal files not on view you can click on Get New Hand Files at the bottom of the screen to make this screen pop up:

Disappointment Reigns .. but, on the other hand, there's a corresponding amount of happiness out there somewhere

On 8/11/2015 2:14 p.m., somebody@xtra.co.nz wrote:
> (name and phone number with-held) sent a message using the contact form at http://www.compassmate.bridge-centre.org/contact.
>
> I would like an explanation please as to why my partner and I dropped such a considerable percentage form our Club result. I do use Compass frequently and realise there are scoring differences but find the outcome from Friday completely unfathomable. We also don't seem to appear on the scoring of the non aggregate E/W result.
> I will really have to consider playing this event again...one I have supported for many years.
>
Our reposte ..

We-ell, Somebody .. it's like this:

Babich NZ-Wide Pairs .. the Final Wrap

OK Folks. All scores are finally in. If everything had gone smoothly enough the job might have been only an easy twelve hours and we'd have been able to enjoy regular updates with breakfast on Saturday morning. Ah me .. best laid plans! Server issues dogged us throughout the day and there was trouble with key people attending weddings or playing tournaments on far-away islands. But - we got there in the end. We scored across a field of 970 pairs playing at 57 venues.

As Jan Spaans comments:

  • Again it was an incredible team effort to get to the final result.
  • The main problem again was that clubs didn’t send us a result file, or to a wrong email address or incomplete files.
  • Chasing people nationwide via phone on Saturday morning again hit a lot of answer phones, but in the end it got things moving again in the right direction.
  • Once we had at least something, even wrong files, Bob has been a rock in fixing some club files to something we (ie Compass) could handle.

All credit to Bob Fearn, author of Compass scoring whose devotion to the game has made this powerful tool available to us. Compass is Bob's life work and now that he has retired from his day job he has had even more time to put into developing amazing tools to complement an already sophisticated scoring package. From all the participants in the country: a very big Thank You Bob.

Exciting Development ..

Following a lead from the Tauranga Bridge Club, Bob Fearn has added a great little routine to Compass scoring. Not long ago an article on the Tauranga site showed how you can use BBO to replay the actual deals from some session you might have played at your club.

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