Dean's Trophy 2007

The Trophy this year was conducted in a different format altogether, with pairs-based qualifiers and a team-of-four Swiss-league finals.

I believe that the tournament was much fairer, since there were no short knockout matches. And for a field that consists predominantly of players who barely know the basic laws of bridge and, when asked about partnership understandings, don't even say “I don't know” but stare in bewilderment and incomprehension, the tournament was highly technologically advanced.

For one, all deals were computer-dealt, and based on true random numbers downloaded from random.org. And for another, scoring was on the IMP format and comparison was made not with the field but with the double-dummy par result on the board (which fact all but three or four of the players were blissfully unaware of, of course).

All deals, all results (of the qualification rounds), and all double-dummy analyses, are available for download.

1. Group 1 Qualifiers




• All results in a spreadsheet


• The eighteen deals used, as a PDF


• The eighteen deals used, in the Portable Bridge Notation (PBN) format


• Double-Dummy analysis of all deals




2. Group 2 Qualifiers




• All results in a spreadsheet


• The fifteen deals used, as a PDF


• The fifteen deals used, in the Portable Bridge Notation (PBN) format


• Double-Dummy analysis of all deals




3. Finals




• Summary of results of the qualifiers
  
• The twenty-four deals used, as a PDF


• The twenty-four deals used, in the Portable Bridge Notation (PBN) format


• Double-Dummy analysis of all deals


• Summary of the results of the finals




4. All these files, zipped into one

Flash Cards From Bridge Clues

At Bridge Clues, there are twelve sets of flash cards for sale. Each set consists of a (fixed?) number of small cards with a question on the front and the answer on the back. All cards of a set are on the same theme.

They also post images of the flash cards on the website, a new one every day. However, they have not removed old cards and seem to upload cards in advance. I was therefore able to download three complete sets and they're named in such a way that you can easily browse through them using, say, Microsoft Picture and Fax Viewer.

The level, I believe, is about right for the better players in our institute.

1. Set 6: Takeout Doubles, Negative Doubles, Responsive Doubles


2. Set 10: What Is Your Hand Worth?


3. Set 11: Preempts—Bidding, Responses, and Defense.rar