We successfully held our first game last night! Next game this afternoon, Open Pairs at 4:15 p.m.

Last night we held a smallish but enthusiastic game of five full tables. That gave us the opportunity to play a 9-round Howell movement, so every pair was able to play against every other pair. That's what we call a perfect game: every pair plays every board and every opponent. :)

First place was no surprise, going to the very strong pair of Lulu Minter and Bill Papa. Second place is the big news, with relative newcomers Kim Ebner and Sarah Deschenes showing up big. Way to go!

Howell movements like that should be rare. They make for better play with small games, so everyone gets to play against more opponents. If we have a Howell, I'll try to remember to announce it at the start of the game. In a Howell, your seat direction may change with each round.

Why wasn't the game stratified? BBO does the stratification of games automatically, by dividing the field into thirds, by average masterpoint holding of each pair. With that they'll create A, B, and C strats. They'll only stratify a game with a minimum number of pairs, and I think it's 15. All but the smaller games will be stratified.

Game results: I've added links to the game results to the web site here: https://bridgemojo.com/ppdvbc#results You'll find links to results on BBO and ACBL Live. I'll add The Common Game when we have that set up.

Notice that the masterpoint awards on ACBL Live are significantly higher than the ones on BBO. That's real! These games are paying 150% of what you would have won last year in a bridge club. ACBL is recalculating the awards generated by BBO. So visit the BBO results to see boards, but the ACBL results to see awards.

Next week's Silver Linings games are 3x points, and silver ones at that.

Partnerships! If you're looking for a partner for any game, drop me a note. If it's less than two hours to game time, you can add yourself to the Partnership Desk inside the game itself.

I think we've hit the ground running. I'm hoping to see more of the novice players come online for Saturday morning's game!

Best regards,
Mojo
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Morris Jones, Monrovia, CA
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