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Club Activities

The Common Game

The Common Game

So some snowbirds come back and are eager to show me The Common Game on their I-phone. I had heard about it and even played in it once in Florida. I decided Build Better Bridge needed to be the only club in Iowa that participated in this program, so I signed us up.

Here’s the deal: The Common Game was started in Florida to play the same hands all over the USA and matchpoint them against the whole field. You don’t win more master points for winning. There is some glory involved in seeing how you did compared to people all over the country. I am proud to say that BBB has won the Common Game (first overall!) several times and we usually have more than one pair who places.

When I signed up, I was excited about the expert analysis feature. Unfortunately, this is mainly offered for day games. On Wednesday, January 4, we got expert analysis on 10 of the 27 hands that we played. I hope this is going to be an added feature.

There are also some really cool features, such as replay the hand, determine the best lead, etc., that we could use if we used the bridge mate scoring machines. That may happen in our future.  It is good to ease into the features and add more later.

If you are signed up at the ACBL for instant results, you will get the common game results on your e-mail. If you are not, it is easy to sign up, either at ACBL.org or at the Common Game. Of course, you can go to thecommongame.com and put your ACBL number in and get your results, also. One of the first things you see when you open the page is a $. You don’t need to pay anything. This is just a donation to the “expert guys” for their analyses. There are also some tutorials that are interesting. They make you wish we used the bridge mates, though, because they show these great things that would happen if you did.

We are very lucky to have a link on our web page that will send you right to the common game scores and hands for the Wednesday night game. Go to http://cedarrapidsbridge.com and then to results and then just click on the common game.

This is one more learning tool that Build Better Bridge is proud to offer you. I hope you like it and that we can expand by getting bridge mates in the future. Meanwhile, try it and see what you think!