Newton-Wellesley Duplicate Bridge Club


	"Fun, competitive duplicate bridge at a very convenient location"

Alan Frantz, owner/principal director

Game Times

Monday (incl. holidays) 10:30am, Tuesday 7:15pm, Friday 10:30am

Game Location

Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington St., Newton, MA (for directions, use button at left.)

KOSHER ONLY. Bridge players are reminded that we are only allowed to bring Kosher food into Temple Reyim, and this means food packaged with one of the Kosher symbols on the package. Even if you keep a Kosher kitchen at home, you cannot bring goodies to the club to share with other players. If you are bringing a lunch to the daytime games, fruits and veggies are considered to be okay.

Type of Game

Stratified, Non-smoking. Game fee is $7.50. All games have pre-dealt hands and printed hand-records.

Club Cell Phone

508-654-8136 is available during two hours preceding game time, and is enabled to receive voice mail messages. The director will always listen to those messages before game time.

Alan's home phone

508-653-6918 (but e-mail preferred)

Bad Weather Games

SNOW CANCELLATION ? The bridge club prides itself on having games unless the conditions are really miserable. If the snow has stopped by morning, the roads are open, and the Temple's parking lot has been plowed, then we will have a game, If the Newton Public Schools have canceled school, then we will NOT have a game. If in doubt, feel free to call my cell phone 508-654-8136.

UNLESS YOU SEE A NOTICE HERE CANCELLING THE GAME, YOU SHOULD ASSUME THERE WILL BE BRIDGE AT OUR CLUB AT THE USUAL TIME. Several tables have been showing up in bad weather conditions, so don't be shy -- Alan

Air Conditioning Policy

During the warm weather, AIR CONDITIONING will be ON. Please bring a sweater if you need to be warmer. The room we play in is relatively small, and becomes hot and stuffy, particularly at the south end of the room. When I turn on the air conditioning, people at the north end of the room soon complain they are too cold. I am NOT going to keep turning it on and off. The air-conditioning will be ON, and players are expected to dress accordingly.

NewtWellDB-game@yahoo.com

Click on the button at the left to be added to our email list.

Links to EMBA, District, and ACBL Web Sites

	EMBA Unit 108 & Sectionals
	District 25 & Regional Tournaments
	ACBL Home Page

You can sign up for Fri. Oct 17th Swiss Teams using the Advance Team Entry Form.

The Q4 calendar is available on the Schedule tab.

AUGUST masterpoints have been sent to the ACBL, and the listings of these points are on the MP Races Tab.

Anand Lele, Len Aberbach, and Bert Winer were the winners for August in Flights A, B, and C, respectively.

Each will receive a Free Play - for details see MPRaces tab.

Due to infestation of spam, the Suggestions page on our website has been disabled.  Please simply send e-mail to the club, or communicate directly with 
the director.

Jeff Lehman has another neat hand, this from our Monday Feb 18th game, posted on the Neat Plays page.

The Cumulative 2007 results are also posted on the MP Races tab.  In prior years, we simply awarded
the Flight A winner with Free Plays for all of January, but this year we have tracked Flights B and C
as well, and I have decided to award the following full year Free Play awards:

1.  Five Free Plays to Sheila Gabay for Flight A
2.  Four Free Plays to Len Aberbach for Flight B
3.  Three Free Plays to Bert Winer for Flight C.

The full year alphabetic list is also available, and I was pleased to note we awarded a total of more than
5500 Masterpoints to 577 different players!  Thank you all, ALL of you, for coming and congratulations to all.
-- Alan

Jeff Lehman has sent an example where non-standard defensive plays turn out to be the winning choices.

 See the Neat Plays tab.

A new Free Play Policy took effect on April 3, 2006. Thanks to all of you who provided input to this decision. Click on the link above to read the policy.

The ALERT procedure is to protect the opponents from cases where a bid has an unusual or unexpected meaning. IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE BIDDER'S PARTNER TO BE *SURE* THAT THE OPPONENTS ARE AWARE THAT THE BID HAS BEEN ALERTED. Saying "Alert" may not be enough, when many opponents do not hear well. I strongly urge you to also use a visual signal -- that is why the bidding boxes come equipped with Alert cards. Those of us who play highly artificial systems (e. g., Precision), do this as second nature, and often ask an apparently inattentive opponent, "did you see or hear the Alert?"

Last night I had to rule on a case of an unheard Alert. South opened a Flannery 2D bid and North, a soft-spoken gentleman, said "Alert". The auction then proceeded 2D-2S-X-P-P-P. I was called to the table when the carnage was over and the hand with AJxxxx of spades had gone down four. He was very surprised when his RHO had only one diamond. Both opponents claimed not to have heard the Alert, but the bidder, who knew to expect the Alert, had heard it. I ruled that a proper Alert had not been given and awarded Av-/Av+ on the board. Be very clear on this point: When you Alert, it is YOUR responsibility to be sure the opponents are aware of what is going on.

Recommended procedure for ALERTing: 1. Say "Alert!" 2. Put the ALERT card on the table. 3. Look directly at the opponent whose turn it is to call and get acknowledgement that s/he heard/saw the Alert.

DISCUSSING HANDS DURING THE SESSION IS NOT SOCIABLE — IT IS ILLEGAL! A good player, who plays infrequently at our club, sent me this e-mail after playing in a NAOP game:

This morning, as I was looking over the hand sheet from Tuesday night, I remembered a comment from "North" as I sat down to play at a table in Section A. [I am editing out table information to protect the guilty.] She said, "Have you played Board 25 yet?" I try to ignore such comments, because it just means something especially weird about the distribution of that board. We hadn't played it, but when I looked this morning of course it was a makeable slam on 1-0-7-5 distribution. This is a very bad habit of some who should know better after many years of playing. This kind of behavior could have an adverse effect on the game, AND IT IS ILLEGAL. The less discussion of hands, bids, leads and other I coulda, shoulda the better off we all are. There's plenty of time after the game to rehash.

Fouled Boards are Serious! On Tuesday evening, two pairs told me that Board 7 from Monday morning May 16th's Int'l Fund Game, was fouled when they played it relatively late in the session. The North and East hands had been interchanged. I immediately verified that this was true, since the board had not yet been reshuffled for the Tuesday game. The next question is when and how this happened. The board was duplicated at table 4, and first played at table 2. The contract at table 2 was consistent with the (correct) original configuration of the board. At all subsequent tables the score is more consistent with the fouled state of the board. This constitutes strong circumstantial evidence that the hands got put into the wrong pockets before the board left table 2. Putting hands back into the wrong pockets is a very serious procedural error. The director is free to assign a procedural penalty of up to a full board, and in this case, I am penalizing both pairs at Table 2 the full 11 matchpoints. The penalty is moot since neither pair ranked high enough to win any masterpoints, but I wish to emphatically warn all players against post-mortem discussions that involve pulling hands out of a board you have just played.

	When attempting to send e-mail, I often get failure notices. I invite each of you to help me by getting me your correct e-mail address or asking me to remove you from my list. You can send e-mail to the club at NewtWellDBC@yahoo.com.
	*Swiss Teams are still* a HUGE success!** Swiss Team games have proven to be very popular at our club, attracting between 15-30 teams, and the current plan is to schedule two such games each quarter, one on Tuesday evening and one in the daytime, alternating Monday and Friday. All future Swiss Team games will be a special event that permits awarding more MP to the winners.
	Visit Us! This club welcomes visitors. In March and April we had a couple from England with us for several weeks. Then a grandfather from North Carolina was visiting and brought his 12-year-old grandson with him to play at our club. On October 15th, we welcomed Alvaro Betan of Medellin, Colombia, and found him a good partner with whom he came in third. In each case, the visitor contacted the director early enough to make suitable arrangements.
	SCORING ACROSS THE FIELD: Whenever we have two sections playing the same (computer dealt) boards, we will "score across the field," meaning that your result is compared to all pairs playing this board in both sections. This causes the top on a board to be 15 instead of 7.
	Volunteer opportunity! You can play with eager senior players at nursing home near Coolidge Corner. See the News & Notes page.