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CR Bridge

Club Activities

2018 Local Tournament News

 

Event Dates Results Flyer  Other
Cedar Falls Sectional Nov 9-11 Results Flyer  
(at Council Bluffs) Nebr. Regional Oct 22-28 Results Flyer  
Davenport Fall Sectional  Oct 19-21   Flyer  
Dubuque Sectional  Sept 28-30 Results Flyer  
Iowa City Fall Sectional  Aug 24-26 Results Flyer  
“Iowa Gold” NLM (0–750) Regional Aug 17-19 Results Flyer  
Cedar Rapids Summer Sectional  July 13-15 Results Flyer  
Coralville Regional  June 26-July 1 Results Flyer  
Longest Day at BBB June 20 Day
Nite
Article Donate
CR Sectional (under 500) June 9-10 Game 1, Game 2, Game 3, Game 4 Article Hands 1 , Hands 2 , Hands 3 , Hands 4
Mt Pleasant Sectional April 28-29 Results    
IA City Sectional (Hills) Mar 23-25 Results   Awards
Davenport Winter Sectional  Feb 16-18  Results    
Cedar Rapids Winterland Sectional Jan 26- 28 Results    
    2017 Results     
    2016 Results    
    2015–May/2016    

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Expert Lessons from Toronto

In July, my hubby and I traveled out of the country to find more and better teaching material for the local players. I was especially interested in the ABTA (American Bridge Teachers Association) convention. We went two days early so that I could attend the teacher convention before the national tournament started. It was a thrill to hear the people whose books and articles I read. I listened to lectures by Julian Laderman (the best at simplifying squeezes), Audrey Grant, Zia Mahmood (funny!), Jerry Helms, Eric Rodwell, and Jeff and Ginny Schuett. You may not have heard about those last two, but they were excellent teachers and willing to share their expertise with us. I have wanted to put together a lesson on card combinations for a long time, but always got stuck because it seemed so complicated. Jeff and Ginny shared a seminar lesson about this topic and did a great job teaching us how to teach it. They gave us permission to use the material if we gave them credit.

So, I am doing a series of lessons on card combinations. I started the series last Wednesday on capturing the Jack. Wednesday, August 2, I will continue with Queen capturing. I’ve learned a lot from Audrey Grant and Jeff and Ginny about the ” cards on the table” approach. We practice the concept with examples of cards all laid out and ready to analyze and then play a few hands to put it all together.

I am passionate about teaching bridge. I hope players will come on August 2 and August 30. If you missed the first lesson, it will be easy to catch up. I will give you the lesson you missed. Jeff and Ginny charge $50 each for their seminar. I am offering you much of the same material at no charge. 5:45 at Country Inn and Suites. Improve your bridge game with free lessons! What a deal!

Cedar Rapids 2017 Summer Sectional Broke Records!

The Cedar Rapids Summer Sectional broke records for any Cedar Rapids tournament over the last 15 years. (that’s as far back as I have records). We had 124 1/2 tables in play. It was amazing! We had loads of out of towners who flocked to this popular tournament. Thank you to all who attended!

Last fall, the unit 163 board president issued a “President’s Challenge” to any 2017 tournament increasing the tournament attendance by 10% of the average of the last three years. We have had four tournaments miss the mark, even decreasing in attendance. The March Hills Tournament was the first to make the challenge. That earned them a party at the club of the chair’s choice. The second success was the Under 300 tournament in June. A party was held at the Cedar Rapids Monday club for that success. The Cedar Rapids Summer Sectional has been increasing in attendance every year and needed over 122 tables to make the challenge goal. We did it! The party to celebrate this success will be August 30 at Build Better Bridge. Come help us celebrate!

Managing Image Collections

It is not all that easy to manage precise image placement in a post.  Recall that the images have to fit in the theme width assigned to posts.  Also, there are three versions of the theme based on viewing device, and images will shift position when constrained by viewing space.  To get a sense of this, view your post in a non-maximized browser window and adjust the browser window width.

Positioned with “Float Left”

As a starting strategy, simply insert all the images one after another.  Select each image in turn and select the far left emblem for positioning on all of them.  The example at left illustrates positioning.  This selection assigns “Float Left” positioning, which does two things:  It pushes the image to the left of the available space, and it allows other images or text to wrap to the right.

Link Setting (Although illustrating left alignment, this image is centered.)

While you are at it, if you would like to have a slideshow, you have to modify every image involved.  Click the pencil icon and change the “Link To” setting to “Media File”.  All the images with this setting will participate in the slideshow.  You needn’t set the link address; it is automatic.

Here is a small mystery that occurred in this post, which was begun by cloning another existing post.  Evidently, the two new illustrations above automatically inherited the “link to media file” setting of the four people images below.  It was necessary to remove this property in order to take them out of the slideshow.  This might not have occurred if this post had been created from scratch.  Addendum:  When I later added the “Clear-Float Button” image, it inherited the same “link to media file” property, which I did not bother to remove.  This suggests to me that, if you want a slideshow, you should add the appropriate property to the first image you insert before adding the other images.

Click any player image below for an example of a slide show.  These four images are floated left and are linked to “Media File,” as described above.

If you are creating a long, narrative post with interspersed images, you might consider scattering the images and using both “float left” and “float right” positioning for variety.  See the red heart images further below.  It is recommended that these interspersed images are kept small, say about 170 pixels wide.

As originally written this article did not address a frequent problem with using a group of successive floated images.  That is, text tends to sneak into the spaces between pictures.  This makes sense because floating an image permits other objects, including text, to wrap around it.  The problem is illustrated below.


Winners Paul and Nancy Klein in second session Saturday.

These four, Kathy Breen, Lu, Sam Shen and Mark Gifford won both team games on Sunday.

Lin and Mark Settle with Sam and Lu.

Dick Lamb with out of town guests.

Here is some text above clear-float.


Here is some text below clear-float.

One solution is to remove the floated positioning by centering the last image in a collection like the four people images above.  This tends to leave a lot of wasted white space.  The text will then begin below the centered image.   This works because “floating” is kind of a sticky property, and something has to happen to remove it.   As an example, the image of the “Link Setting…” is centered, and text does not, therefore, wrap around it.

Floated Left

Floated Right

A better solution now is offered.  A button called “Clear Float” has been added to the editor.   When you are positioned at the place where you intend to enter text, click the button and it will break the tendency to wrap around images.  The Dick Lamb image above is floated left.  This caused subsequent text to float also, wrapping around the image, but the Clear Float button was used to end the text floating after only one sentence.

Suppose you purposely float an image to the left of some text, and the text looks good wrapping around the image.  The only thing that bothers you is that you start a new paragraph and one sentence begins beside the image and the rest of the paragraph resumes below it.  You think this is ugly, so you use Clear Float before the new paragraph to force it to begin below the image instead of beside it.

 

 The heart images above actually were entered one after another and then came the text about “A better solution…”  That text wedged itself between the two floated images even though it came after them.  Now, this paragraph illustrates a slightly different scenario.  The “player” image is floated left, then some text is added, then a player image is floated right, then some more text is added.  Finally, after this sentence, is a clear-float.

Clear-Float Button

A different problem I frequently encounter is trying to insert text after an image that is at the end of the page.  Beware the small blue mark where you place the cursor after the image.  This means you are about to create a link.  Use the right arrow on your keyboard to get past the blue mark.  If you get desperate, switch to the Text editor and type a few letters at the bottom of the page and then switch back to the Visual editor before you mess something up.

One way to avoid the issue is to enter some text — perhaps a few spaces — as a place holder for more text yet to come.  Do this before inserting the image you are adding.  Insert it before those spaces.


In summary, as a simple beginning strategy, insert all the images you want one after another.  Float them all left.  Position the cursor after all the images preparatory to inserting some text.  Click the Clear Float button, and then start typing your text.

Successful Under 500 Tournament in Cedar Rapids (2017)

On June 10-11, Unit 163 had an Under 500 tournament at the Country Inn and Suites.  There were 35 tables for the two day tournament. Many communities were represented including Unit 163 communities of Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Quad Cities, Waterloo, and Dubuque. In addition there were players from Minnesota, Missouri, and Illinois. Many participants took advantage of the free lessons by MaryAnn. Local players, Marion Engel, Jack Falat, Gary Edwards and MaryAnn, had a panel discussion between sessions on Saturday. Bill Kent did a great job directing. It was a wonderful opportunity for players to earn silver points and compete with peers.

Tournament results are here.

Click any image for a slide show.

MaryAnn Shaughnessy and Jo Bouslog were winners in the first session Saturday.

Winners Paul and Nancy Klein in second session Saturday.

These four, Kathy Breen, Lu, Sam Shen and Mark Gifford won both team games on Sunday.

Lin and Mark Settle with Sam and Lu.

Dick Lamb with out of town guests.

Design Correction for “Bold” Problem in Announcements

An esoteric problem was experienced with the “Announcements” widget block: Where the announcements are displayed in the footer, the text color is automatically inverted to white because the background is dark.  However, for text that was bolded, the color failed to invert and the text could not be seen in the footer.

The cause of this was that the <strong> html tag use for bolding was specified as dark at all times in the main css file of the theme.  To counter this, the following was added to the  css file in order to change the bold text color to white whenever it appears in the footer area:

.footer strong {
font-weight: bold;
color:white;
}

This fix did not work immediately on the local computer, using Chrome;  it was found to be necessary to clear the browser cache.  Evidently refreshing a page doesn’t necessarily refresh the associated CSS file.  Therefore, this correction may not appear immediately for all customers.

If the Empo theme is updated this change will need to be installed again.

2017 Tournament Results

Davenport Fall Sectional, October 20-22, 2017 RESULTS
Dubuque Sectional, September 22-24, 2017 RESULTS
Cedar Rapids Summer Sectional, July 14-16, 2017 RESULTS
Under 500, June 10-11 Results  Sat am, Sat pm, Sun am, Sun pm
Mason City (Combined w/District 14 GNT), May 5-7, 2017 RESULTS
Mt Pleasant Sectional, April 7-9, 2017 RESULTS
Iowa City (Hills) Spring Sectional, March 24-26, 2017 RESULTS
Second Annual Awards Games, February 25, 2016, Afternoon ResultsEvening Results
Davenport Winter Sectional, February 17-19, 2017  RESULTS
Cedar Rapids Winterland Sectional – Jan 20-22, 2017  

 2016 RESULTS
Archived Results, 2/2015 to 5/2016

Answers for Class on Redoubles

Answers for Lesson on Redoubling

Given April 5 at BBB and April 10 at Noelridge Church

  1. Your partner has opened 1♣ and RHO made a TO double. You have: ♠ KJ1087 ♥ 4 ♦ A103 ♣ Q976

            Bid a forcing one spade. Otherwise your opponents will start bidding hearts and you will have trouble describing your hand. Later bids will clear things up.

  1. Same auction as #1. You have:♠ KQJ6 ♥ 42 ♦ 7542 ♣ 1076

           Bid one spade. Still forcing, just like it would have been if there was no intervening double. Later passes will clarify.

  1. Partner opens 1♠. RHO makes a TO double, You have ♠ 5 ♥ AK97 ♦ A654 ♣ K853

          RD Shortness in partner’s suit and length in the other suits makes you think Double! Get there by starting with a RD.

  1. This time partner opened 1♦, RHO made a TO double and you have: ♠ QJ987 ♥ K4♦ 542 ♣ 1076

          Bid one spade. You are not expecting to bid again.

  1. This time partner opened 1 ♦, RHO made a TO double and you have: ♠ J976 ♥ J2 ♦ K76 ♣ KJ87

           Bid 1 NT. Your spade suit is too poor, but you have enough to say something and 1NT describes your hand.

  1. Partner opens 1♠, RHO makes a TO double, you have: ♠ QJ54 ♥ A3 ♦ K1032 ♣ 654

         Jordan 2NT You use this convention so that you can bid three spades on a weaker hand. If you don’t play Jordan here you have to play a limit raise and bid 3S.

  1. Partner opens 1 ♣, RHO makes a TO double, you have: ♠ 3 ♥ KQ1086 ♦ AQ542 ♣ 103

          Bid one heart. You will bid your diamonds later to show a two-suiter.

  1. Partner opens 1 ♥, RHO makes a TO double, you have: ♠ void ♥ K6543♦ QJ109 ♣ 8754

           Bid four hearts. You love this weak freak sort of hand. Steal the bidding room and let them make a   decision at the four level.  Non vul against vul, you might just bid 5 hearts if your partner passes four spades.

  1. Partner opens 1 ♥, RHO makes a TO double, you have: ♠ Q1076 ♥ 2 ♦ A32 ♣ AQ976                                                                  You are looking to penalize the opponents. Let your partner know you do not have a fit with him, but you do have 10+ points. You are planning to penalty double whatever the opponents bid.
  2. Partner opens 1 ♠, RHO makes a TO double, you have: ♠ QJ5 ♥ J1098 ♦ A65 ♣ 987                                                                      Keep it simple. This is a plain old two spade bid.
  1. Partner opens 1♥, RHO makes a TO double, you have: ♠ A6 ♥3 ♦ KJ10876 ♣ 7654

         If you agreed to play two of a minor nonforcing, this is the hand for it. Bid 2D.

  1. Partner opens 1♠, RHO makes a TO double, you have ♠ AQ76 ♥ KQ5 ♦ QJ108 ♣ 76

           With this rare hand, you have to start with RD and later bid game in spades. Your message to partner is that you have a full opener with spade support. If you had a similar hand without such good spade support (usually just two), you can start with a RD and then bid NT.

  1. Partner opens 1 ♠. RHO makes a TO double, you have ♠ 10987 ♥ KQ4 ♦ J10654 ♣ 6

         This is the three spade hand. You play Jordan so that you can bid three on hands like this. You might steal the bid.

 

 

 

Creating a Link

This post describes in detail how to create a link in a post, page or widget block.  You can click on one of the pictures to expand it or view the pictures as a slideshow.

Figure 1: Highlight Link Text

Step 1: Highlight the text you want to see in the link, as in Figure 1. The text is NOT the same as the address the link takes you to, though it can be. Then click the link symbol (indicated by the big arrow in Figure 1).

Figure 2: Insert URL

Step 2: Paste or type the desired web address (“URL”) in the corresponding window. If you want a new tab to open when the link is clicked, select “New Window” in the target dropdown. See Figures 2 and 3. Click OK.  An easy way to get the URL you want is to open the target item in a separate tab and then to select and copy and paste what you see in the browser’s address window.

Figure 3. Click OK to close Link Pop-Up

Figure 4. Still in the Editor: Update, Test

Step 3: Note that the link text is now underlined and colored (usually), as in Figure 4, denoting a link. “Update” the post, page or widget block.

Step 4: Open the post or page or widget block in a new tab.  Test the link you have created.

Step 5: If the link doesn’t work, reopen the editor and click on the link text. This will open a little tab that lets you correct or delete the link (Figure 5).  Click the pencil symbol and make your changes to the URL. Click “apply”.  “Update” the post, and then retest as needed.

Note:  After you click the pencil symbol, you will see a settings button (gear symbol).  You probably should avoid this button if you can, as cleanly closing the resulting pop-up is awkward.

Figure 5. The link needs edited.

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!