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 can be purchased from The Bridge Shop, phone 02 9967 0644. These Laws came 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.

We also have a useful Commentary on the Laws prepared by Ton Kooijman, Chairman of the WBF Laws Committee. This has lots of examples of applications of the laws.

We have received permission to publish Laval Du Breuil's Flow Charts covering the Laws of Bridge. These are a great aid for the less experienced directors having to make rulings on those tricky and less common occurrences such as a bid out of turn. There are 38 flow charts in the document, each annotated with further law references where applicable.

Directors Forum

The ABDA operates a Directors Forum as a resource and discussion board for directors.

There are three active 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.

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

The latest issue of the Directors Bulletin, October 2011 is available on the Directors Forum.

Seminars

The last ABDA Directors Seminar was held in Sydney on 1/2 October, 2011. Previous Seminars were held in Perth on 30/31 Oct, 2010, in Brisbane on 31 Oct/1 Nov, 2009, in Melbourne on 8/9 November, 2008 and in Sydney on 15/16 September, 2007.

General

• Tony Howes runs introductory courses for Club Directors in NSW from time to time. The next course is on Sunday, 21 April. See flyer for details. See Tony's Course Notes (an 11 page PDF file).

• The QBA also have comprehensive Course Notes for Club Directors

• 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. This includes some excellent notices that can be used in club bulletins or for player education

• 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.

• There are 4 Laws forums hosted by BridgeBase online. These are moderated by David Stevenson and Ed Reppert

• 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.

Bridge Scoring Software

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

Here is a very comprehensive but simple User's Guide for Directors using ASE8. It also includes detailed instructions for using BridgeMates with ASE8.

ABF Tournament Regulations

See this ABF webpage for details of the ABF

• Tournament Regulations

• System Regulations

• Alerting Regulations

• Screen Regulations

• Written Bidding & Bidding Boxes Regulations

• Appeal Regulations

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. All previous questions and answers can be seen there.

The ABDA Directors Bulletin

There is an archive of all the ABDA Directors Bulletins published since February 2000 on our Directors Forum. These are available for reading by registered members of the ABDA.