General Conditions Of Contest for Simultaneous Pairs
Please also check the General Regulations
1. General
It is particularly important with simultaneous pairs events being held at different times that clubs ensure that security is observed - for example if your club is playing during the morning or afternoon, or even over more than one day, your players must be aware that they cannot go to a different club later in the day or the following day(s) and play the hands again!
It is also important that clubs do not upload their results to their own sites, where the hands and frequencies will be visible, until the hands and frequencies appear on the main ECatsBridge site - to check the time (and in the case of World events the day) that these will appear, just go to the results pages for the event and click the link at the top to Frequencies - if they are not live it will tell you the time and date (in UK time) when they will appear. Please ensure you do not publish yours until that time.
Subject to the regulations of the competition in question,
these regulations shall apply to any competition conducted
by any sponsoring
organisation for which the event is being organised by
ECatsBridge.
2. Conditions of Contest
Club Rules will apply to Simultaneous Pairs events except where these are superseded by any Regulations published by the Sponsoring Organisation ( in the case of the World Wide Simultaneous Pairs, it is the WBF, for the European Simultaneous Pairs it is the EBL etc).
In principle, there shall be no restriction on those participating other than those of space or club membership. A club may refuse entry to any person who is deemed persona non grata by that club. However the English Bridge Union places a restriction on non-affiliated English clubs and does not permit these to participate in any event licensed for Master Points other than the ECats Children in Need Charity Pairs. Wherever possible a separate event will be arranged to cater for non-affiliated clubs.
By participating in a Simultaneous Pairs, a player agrees to have his or her name published on the website scoring the event, and, as a consequence, accepts that their name will appear in the search engines.
4. Systems
The systems policy of the club in which the event is to be played shall prevail.5. Date of the Event
The event must be played on the date specified by the Sponsoring Organisation. Clubs may play at any time of day, but if a club chooses to play in the morning or afternoon it must be made absolutely clear to all players that security MUST be observed and that they must not discuss the hands with or show the booklets to anyone likely to play later in the day or in the evening. Nor must they play at one club during the day and then play in the same event later in the evening. Furthermore results, frequencies and hands must not be published on any website until at least 11 pm on the evening of the date of the event or in the case of the World Wide Bridge Contest events until noon on the day following the event, to allow all clubs to have played before details are published.
6. Procedure
If booklets are provided, the hands for setting in the boards and the books of the hands will be packed as two separate sealed packages and sent to a named official of the club or a zip file containing all the relevant data shall be sent to such official.The sealed package of the books of hands must remain unopened until conclusion of the play of the heat. The hands for setting in the boards will be printed on travelling score slips, and will be contained in the second sealed package.
If the material is sent by email it will be sent as a zip file containing PDF copies of the commentary, usually in A4 or letter format for ease of printing, the travellers, the general instructions, the payment instructions and four files that may be used for dealing machines if the club has access to these.
7. Making up the Boards
If the boards are to be made up at the table before the start of play, the envelope containing the travellers and the one with the booklets must be taken unopened to the heat, then the travellers distributed to the players so that they can make up the boards.
If the boards are to be made up by someone who is not playing in the event beforehand, the sealed envelope with the travellers may be given to that person so that this can be done.
If the boards are to be made up using a dealing machine, the person to do the dealing should email Anna and request the files stating the date and event they are needed for and ideally stating which type they need. Or the club organiser can make the request (giving the email address to which they are to be sent).
8. Security
No person shall participate in the competition who has had access to the hands. We know that we can rely on clubs to observe the necessary security9. Scoring;
The club should score the event in accordance with the scoring instructions and upload the results to results@simpairs.com as soon as possible after the event.