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Status Reports
Status: Bridge (2024 - March)
(Text as at 15/04/2024 00:34:34)
*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***
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Rationale for this Project
- I showed some natural talent for bridge in my youth1, and I’ve wanted to see how far I can get with a bit of application (but – given the breadth my other interests – without fanaticism).
- However, this project has always needed to be kept rigorously in hand, something that has rarely been the case since I returned to the game.
- Basically, Bridge is fun and I do reasonably well, but not well enough2 to justify making it a major focus of my efforts.
- I’ve been back playing again since December 2007, with numerous intermissions3.
- While I’ve now decided I’m much more suited to Bridge than Chess, I will also take Chess more seriously than hitherto and try to learn something about the game. This means that I can’t spend much time on Bridge even if I wanted to.
- As of September 2021, two local Clubs which I used to attend regularly – Billericay Mayflower Bridge Club and Mountnessing Bridge Club (Defunct) – re-opened. Unfortunately, while the former is – while not exactly thriving – still holding its head above water, the latter has sadly died.
- In default of other enthusiastic volunteers I have taken on various roles on the Committee for Mayflower: I’m Secretary and Webmaster and an accounts signatory; I can also run the scoring system, though will no longer do so every week.
- For 2024, I’ve decided to play once a week with Albert at Mayflower and once a month at Chelmsford, also with Albert. Otherwise, I’ll only play in the occasional social event. The reasons for playing with Albert are threefold: enjoyable & relaxing, low maintenance and reasonably successful.
- See my Bridge Page4 for further information on my Bridge activities.
General Status
- Statistics: by partner and club-category can be obtained by following these links – for the last quarter and to date.
- Results: Follow this link. Further information can be found from my Bridge Page5.
- Master Points:
- 38,2386, bagged to date, including 1,298 Blue Points and 109.39 Green Points.
- That makes me a National Master. My next milestone7 will be to achieve Premier National Master status (40,000 LPs, including 100 GPs) – so comfortably there as far as GPs are concerned, and getting there for local points, though still another 1,800 needed.
- EBU Grading:
- I surged up to a mid-K towards the end of the Quarter after three sessions coming top with Albert.
- See EBU: NGS for full details of the scheme, and previous Status Reports and my Summary of Progress to Date8 for my detailed meanderings over time.
- Summary of Progress to Date: I’ve hived off the history to a Summary of Progress to Date9 document, which is in need of a minor update. I’ll probably only update it once a year unless there’s an exciting development.
- Further Details: of time expenditure against task are given below, extracted from the relevant version of my Summary Task List10 (which is regularly updated between Quarterly Status Reports) and YTD here11..
Summary of Progress during January - March 2024
- I spent 112.75 hours in 24Q1 on this Project, or related work (165.25 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2023). That's 123.6% of the planned effort (115.2% YTD). Overall, 14.2% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 11% YTD) - as against 11.3% planned (9.6% YTD).
- I exceeded my time allocation by almost a quarter, but this didn’t really represent scope creep.
- I played weekly at Mayflower, monthly at Chelmsford and at one social event – at Robert’s. All very enjoyable and moderately successful.
- My Master Points received a couple of unexpected boosts. 2 GPs for my guest appearance in the ECBA League Division 1 last year and 374 LPs for coming 22 / 421 nationally in an ECATS SIMS.
- Further details follow:-
Bridge (Total Hours = 112.75)
- Bridge - Reading / Writing
- Bridge - Admin (Total Hours = 16.75)
- Bridge - Play (Total Hours = 60.5)
- Bridge - Chelmsford (Albert) (10.75 hours)
- Bridge - Mayflower (Albert) (42.25 hours)
- Bridge - Robert's Bridge Party (7.5 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Playing" (60.5 hours)
- Bridge - Study (Total Hours = 30.75)
- Bridge - Session Reviews - Albert (15 hours)
- Bridge - Session Reviews - Robert's Bridge Party (0.75 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - Albert (13.5 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - David P (0.25 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - Graham (0.25 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - Robert (0.25 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Reviews - Robert's Bridge Party (0.75 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Study" (30.75 hours)
Plans for the Near Future:
- As I’m going to be playing once or – monthly – twice a week, I’ve maintained the weekly time allocation at 7 hours, to cover this and my administrative duties, though this isn’t quite enough.
- Otherwise,
- Play:-
→ Mayflower: Weekly on Tuesday, with Albert
→ Chelmsford: Monthly on second Friday, with Albert
→ ECBA Championship Pairs (Barleylands): All-play-all (Sunday 21st April 2024) - possibly with David P or Albert
→ Social event (David's): All-play-all (Sunday 28th April 2024)
- Bridge Admin:
→ Website and Secretarial duties for Mayflower Bridge Club.
→ Maintain website for Hutton Union.
→ Maintain my Bridge Page12.
- Study: Re-read Hand-counting papers, focussing on
→ Papers in Counting the Hands13,
→ "Bourke (Tim) & Smith (Marc), Bird (David) - Countdown to Winning Bridge"
→ "Lawrence (Mike) - How to read your opponents' cards: The bridge expert's way to locate missing high cards", and
→ "Lawrence (Mike) - How to Play Card Combinations"
- Read "Kelsey (Hugh) & Glauert (Michael) - Bridge Odds for Practical Players".
- "Reading - Bridge - Magazines".
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2:
- My view is that anyone sufficiently smart to play bridge at the expert level is probably sufficiently smart to do something more useful with their time, so ought not to be playing, except in retirement.
- That said, anyone would like to play like an expert should this be possible while still keeping bridge as a relaxation. I doubt this is possible, certainly in my own case.
Footnote 3:
- I withdrew from the game for most of 2015, but returned in the final quarter. This absence allowed me to get things in perspective for a while thereafter – playing twice or three times a week, with the occasional tournament.
- When not playing, I didn’t miss the game at all, but maybe this was mainly because acting as the Essex County Bridge Association (ECBA) Webmaster provided a psychological substitute.
- I again retired from the game for 18 months, commencing in July 2017. I didn’t miss the game during this period either and I no longer did any Webmastering.
- I then played 2 games in 18Q4 and 6 games in 19Q1.Thereafter, things returned pretty much to normal until the Covid-19 pandemic, when all bridge in clubs and tournaments was shut down from the outbreak and lock-down of mid-March 2020, until full re-opening started in September 2021.
- While there were lots of opportunities for on-line bridge, and several local clubs ran their own sessions, I decided not to take part as it’s too much like a busman’s holiday (given I spend all day in front of a computer). The systems on offer were BBO - Bridge Base On-Line and RealBridge, which has the advantage of having video and audio links, with links to the EBU’s NGS and MP systems. While the development of RealBridge undercuts some of my objections to on-line bridge, in that there is inter-personal contact, it still has the drawback of being stuck in front of a computer screen. As in other “intermissions”, I don’t miss the game in the least – this time because I was happily focusing on my philosophical researches.
- I intermitted for two months in 22Q2, partly to focus on my philosophical researches.
- I intermitted again from end-July 2023 until the end of the year, again to focus on my research.
Footnote 6:
- There’s a slight discrepancy between my records and the EBU stats.
- When the EBU had 33,776, my calculations had 33,915, made up of 22,962 LPs, 1,175 BPs and 100.06 GPs.
- I’ve not been bothered to determine the reason for the discrepancy, nor repeated the comparison as now I’m playing regularly timing issues also play a part. However, I have written a reconciliation program, but haven’t sorted out the discrepancies yet.
- I think I had about 5,000 LPs from my student days, but never registered any, more’s the pity.
- My Gold Points have now “aged off”.
Footnote 7:
- I no longer aim to climb the greasy pole, but simply to enjoy the game.
- As I’ve currently no intention of playing in GP events, there’s no point worrying about advancing my ranking, which is fairly meaningless in any case.
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- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026