English Bridge Union
A question we are often asked is “why does it take a while for my Master Points from a Sim Pairs to be credited to my account?”. As the scoring is done automatically some people assume that the whole process is automated, and as there are scores online before they even get home, they expect everything to be wrapped up in a day or two. But it isn’t that straight forward. Hopefully this explains the process, and if anyone at your club queries it you can let them know.
Although the vast majority of registered clubs will submit their results on the evening, or first thing the following morning, there are some which do not. We cannot start to finalise the results until we have all the results from all the clubs which registered to take part. Some clubs may take a little longer to the submit their results (perhaps they need to query a score with one of the pairs, or the scorer has IT issues so can’t submit them for a few days), and occasionally a club will register to take part, but then forget to tell us that they have withdrawn so we wait for results which are never coming*.
* - and the moral of that story is that if you enter, but then for whatever reason don’t play the hands, then please let us know as soon as possible.
Once we have all the results then we can start the process of checking the results are correct. We therefore need to look at every board to try to identify results which may have been submitted incorrectly. Sometimes it is a simple case of the information having been entered wrongly (a -420 in a sea of +420s because declarer has been entered as East rather than North). In other instances it may become apparent that an error has been made when duplicating the hands; if everyone at a club has made 13 tricks, despite the deal file saying that declarer should be missing the ace of trumps, then one can be fairly confident of an error at the club when duplicating the hands. If it has happened only once then it may be an error, or it may be that there was a revoke which resulted in penalty tricks, and the result is in fact correct.
In all of the above instances we must query any results which may be incorrect with the clubs in question, so that any necessary corrections can then be made.
Once this has been done we are able to generate a final results lists, and calculate what Master Points should be awarded. Then, and only then, can these be credited to your accounts. We aim to complete this process in about three weeks.
So, we thank you for your patience when waiting for the results to be finalised. Significant changes in the results are rare, so the results on the website are likely to be fairly accurate – but as you may know from the World Bridge Games (and you can read about this booboo in the forthcoming issue of English Bridge) it can be awkward to fix retrospectively so it’s best to get it right first time.
