Getting Ready for the Open Teams Trials

If you are interested in following the USBF Open Team trials you should have a look at the pre-bulletin.  This Bulletin is actually the biggest one of the tournament and includes a lot of interesting information that will not be repeated in later bulletins (which are going to be 4 pages). 

Round Robin play starts Friday June 18th.  With 18 teams divided (based on seeding points) into the Bulls and the Bears.  Each of the divisions plays a full round robin (9 boards) with the bottom 3 teams eliminated at the conclusion Saturday evening.  The 12 remaining teams than play 6 more 9-board matches against the surviving 6 teams in the other division.  (There is a fairly complex formula for how carry-over will be calculated, considering results from eliminated teams.)  8 teams with the most VP will move into the round of 16 joined by Meltzer and Robinson. 

You may be confused about how 10 teams are considered the Round of 16.  I was.  The idea is that the 10 teams produced 5 winners to move into the Round of 8.  They are joined by 3 teams who have byes to the Round of 8.  I hope that makes it clear!

Here are some things to note:

“ BBO Vugraph starting with the Round of 16, in which we will probably cover 3 or 4

matches (there will be 5 matches in the Round of 16). The Round of 16 starts in the afternoon of Monday, June 21st.

From the Quarterfinals on, we will cover all of the tables in play.”

For cell phone logon, go to www.bridgebase.com/mobile.

The BBO schedule is the same every day:

10:00-12:10 CDT (Central Daylight Time) 12:25-2:35

3:45-5:55

6:10-8:20

or one hour later in Toronto, New York, Miami etc,  and two hours earlier in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Vancouver and other places West.

During the Round of 32, 16 and 8 each team will play different boards.  This is a bit sad since it is fun to see how different great players handle the same hands.  After that in the latter rounds they will use the same boards.  Okay, I understand the need for security.

Thank you to the USBF for the BBO and the following:

After a session, you can review the Vugraph action on our Web Vugraphs, which show each hand played with a link to bidding and play records.  Web Vugraphs are posted within about half an hour of completion of the Vugraph show

There is a fund of other information, some nice deals, humor and more in the bulletin  including some predictions. 

I am making no predictions but I am keeping a few pictures ready for the finals ….

(Thanks to Peggy Kaplan and Jonathan Steinberg for many of the photos). 

      

  

 For now Good Luck to all the contestants.