Club Focus: Winter 2011

Blue Master Points

by Gordon Rainsford

The EBU is planning to introduce a new sort of Master Point from 1 January 2013 to help Clubs and Counties attract more players to their open competitions.

The EBU has been well aware for some time of a number of problems associated with the current arrangements:

  1. We have introduced Universal Membership but have not yet made any changes to our major recognition scheme - Master Points.
  2. Many individual members are unable to, or simply do not want to travel to EBU Competitions and/or stay overnight. This makes it very difficult to accumulate National Master Points (Greens) which in turn prevents people progressing through the Masterpoint ranks.
  3. There is a large gap between Local and Green Points, and Clubs and Counties have trouble attracting people to their open competitions when they cannot award Green Points

We intend to try and alleviate these problems through the introduction of a new sort of Master Point designated Blue. The characteristics of these points are described in Attachment 1 and I would highlight the following

- Any Club or County event awarding Blue Points must

  • Be a 2 session event
  • Be open to any EBU member
  • Have a licence from the EBU – this licence will be priced at approximately one third the cost of a Green Point licence. This means that if a Blue Point event was being held today, the licence would cost around £2.25 per table per session. There will be no P2P charge at a Blue Point event.

- Clubs can hold 2 such events each year and Counties 4. They can be new events or existing events but in either case they will require a licence.

- EBU Simultaneous Pairs events will award Blue Points rather than Green Points and overall there will be more “green equivalents” awarded

We are hoping that this enhancement will offer Clubs and Counties the opportunity to re-invigorate some of their competitions. We are announcing these plans well in advance to enable Clubs and Counties to discuss and plan their future calendar.

Gordon Rainsford
Assistant Chief Tournament Director

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