Australian Bridge Directors Association

Resources for Directors

As part of its aim to assist in improving the standards of tournament directing, the ABDA will publish links to various resources for Directors on this page.

New Laws

The 2007 edition of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge has been published. They can be purchased from The Bridge Shop, phone 02 9967 0644. Please note that these Laws come into effect within Australia on 1st June 2008.

Directors are encouraged to become familiar with the new laws. To assist in this process, we have published the full texts of the old and new laws in parallel versions with the changes highlighted. These are indexed in the column on the left of this page.

The 2007 Laws of Duplicate Bridge provide for the Regulating Authority (c.f. the ABF/NZ Bridge) to select certain Law options and to regulate their usage within its geographical region. Regulating Authorities are further permitted to provide regional interpretation and guidance as to the application of such options and regulations. This document contains the Zone 7 interpretation of those Laws.
 

Arie Geursen has prepared a presentation of Interpretations, Regulations and Guidance to the new laws which was first presented at the Canberra NOT. This has many practical examples. View it here.

Directors Forum

The ABDA operates a Directors Forum as a resource and discussion board for directors. (If you only get a blank screen when you click the link above, click Refresh in your browser until the forum loads. ABDA financial members should register and set their login status as "forever" for ease of future use.)

There are four sections on this forum. Registration for the forum and participation in all sections except Ask a Director is limited to financial members of the ABDA.

• General Discussion - A forum board where ABDA members can enter into themed discussions with each other on any matters concerned with directing. The moderator is Matthew McManus. Anyone can view the contents of this board. Members must register themselves before they can participate.

• Ask a Director - If you have a question on directing, post it here and our moderator Matthew McManus will reply. Open to non-members as well.

• Appeals Committee - This board contains some ruling situations. Directors and Appeals Committee members are invited to post their views on the problems presented. The moderator is Laurie Kelso who will summarise the discussion on each hand after a period of time. Anyone can view the contents of this board. ABDA Members must register themselves before they can participate.

• Directors Bulletin - Review back issues of the Directors bulletin dating from Issue 26 of February 2000. Available to ABDA members only.

Seminar

A very successful Directors Seminar was held in Sydney on 15/16 September, 2007.

The panel consisted of Jon Free (WABA), Tony Howes (NSWBA), Arie Guersen (NZCBA), Laurie Kelso (VBA), Matthew McManus (NSWBA) and (not shown) Sean Mullamphy (ABF).

A section of the large audience.

General

• Matthew McManus runs introductory courses for Club Directors from time to time. See his Course Notes (a 13 page PDF file).

• The QBA also have comprehensive Course Notes for Club Directors (a 32 page PDF file)

• The QBA have useful items available at their Director Downloads. There is also other information relevant to directing in Queensland at the QBA Directors page

• The BAWA have produced a statement of Duties and Responsibilities of Directors for their events.

• The ACBL has a page of support for Club Directors. Not much is relevant to Australia, but they do publish an excellent 128 page booklet called Duplicate Decisions. This is designed to help club directors give effective and proper rulings by making the Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge easy to understand. The booklet can be viewed or purchased on their site.

• The ACBL has developed an excellent online learning course to enable Club Directors to polish their skills. Called Ruling the Game, the course costs $US25 and can be completed over a 30 day period.

• There is a well supported Laws Forum run at ContractBridge.Net in New Zealand with records of themed discussions going back for a few years.

• International Bridge Laws Forum

• David Stevenson (UK Director) maintains both Bridge and Laws sites

• The Laws of Bridge (World Bridge Federation site)

• Other places to find the Laws of Bridge on the web (various versions)

• See Minutes of meetings of the WBF Laws Committee

Movements

Depending on the Club and time of day/evening, Club Duplicate events often have norms of either 24, 27 or 30 board sessions. To assist Directors quickly pick an optimum movement, here are 3 charts covering 7 -16 table sessions.

  24 board session     27 board session     30 board session

 

Sherman Designs has a range of movement cards of all types available for purchase.

Also see Round Robin movements for Club Teams Events.

Useful Law look-up list

Bridge Scoring Software

See ASE Computing for details of latest ASE Scorer Version 8.

ABF Tournament Regulations

• System Regulations (June 2008)

• Alerting Regulations (June 2008)

• Screen Regulations (June 2008)

• Regulations for Written Bidding & Bidding Boxes (June 2008)

Dear Director

Do you have a directing question? If so, please see the Ask a Director section of our Directors Forum. All questions will receive a reply on the forum. Recent questions and answers can be seen there. We have also assembled an archive of older questions and answers which are grouped below under subject headings.

• Hiding the Bidding

• Insufficient Bid

• Opening bid out of rotation

• Unauthorised Information

• Procedural Penalties

• Penalty Card

• Seeing double - Two identical cards on view

• Claim by Defender

• Dummy's Limitations

• Missing Card

• Change of Compass position
   

Articles from the Directors Bulletin and other bulletins

There is an archive of all the Directors Bulletins published since February 2000 on our Directors Forum. Some articles of general interest and not subject to copyright are reproduced below.

• Climate Control November 1999

• Should simple Stayman be alerted? February 2000

• Some Questions and Answers

• Two interesting rulings

• When declarer says "Run the Diamonds"

• Slow Play (Lindfield Club Bulletin, February 2006)