The Neuberg Formula - Application of the formula

Boards with a different number of results can arise in a variety of different ways, such as the nature of the movement itself or a table being unable to play a board for whatever reason.

In all such instances, and in an ideal world, the Neuberg formula should be used to calculate the final result.

However, it is acknowledged that there are difficulties, not the least being:-

(a)	it is difficult (very difficult) to understand; and
(b)	it is even more difficult (though not impossible) to perform such calculations without the aid of a computer.

For this reason, and for this reason alone, the formula has not been written into the Laws of Bridge as a 'must do it this way'. Indeed, for clubs who score manually we would strongly recommend that you do not even attempt to score this way.

The important thing is to have a rule about how you will score such boards, and then keep to it. Whatever you do though, please don't have three different scorers all scoring it a different way each night!

All World Bridge Federation, European Bridge League and English Bridge Union events are scored using the Neuberg formula, and have been for the last couple of decades. All - or nearly all - modern computer scoring software has the Neuberg formula already built-in, so if your club uses a computer it is likely that you too are already using the Neuberg formula without even realising it