ACBL is experimenting with Newcomer games. You’re welcome to hold your Newcomer games as 0-50 games, rather than 0-20 games. This means that you can mentor the 0-50 players for now, as well. Try to keep their mentoring to a minimum for the higher limit, but it will be legal to create a board set to demonstrate a lesson topic and to answer questions (minimally) at the table for the 0-50 players. If this experiment brings more students to the tables, ACBL may consider raising the Newcomer Class 2 limit officially. We are excited for you and your players, and we’re anxious to hear stories of how this goes for you! Please keep us in the loop!

Clubs are allowed to hold 2 concurrent limited games alongside an open.

• If attendance supports it, clubs may hold an open and 2 concurrent limited games both in their Virtual Club and their Face-to-Face club during the same session.
• You may also hold standalone limited games, 2 concurrently, without having an open game.

Any club will be allowed to hold 2 “mini-sessions” within one ACBL “Formal Session.” For example, if you hold a game with some number of boards, and you expect to finish in plenty of time to hold another one just like it before the next “Formal Session” starts, you may do this. “Formal Sessions” for purposes of this discussion:

• Games beginning prior to 11:30pm will be considered in the Morning session
• Games beginning between 12:00pm and 5:30pm will be considered in the Afternoon session
• All games that begin after 5:30 pm will be considered in the Evening session
• Effective January 1, 2024, the sanction fees will increase from $1.10/table to $1.15/table. Your invoices on Live for Clubs will automatically reflect this small increase.
• Before this “n/18” provision, for a 10-table game, the winners got 1 masterpoint® — and it didn’t matter how many boards you played. Now, the more boards you play, the more masterpoints are awarded! (There is a cap on the multiplier, but until you hit that, every board more than 18 boards played in a game will increase the award.)Now, for that 10-table game playing 18 boards, it still awards 1.0. However, the awards rise incrementally after that, a little bit for each board over 18 that the game plays. For example, using “n/18,” if that game plays 24 boards, the awards will be multiplied by 1.3; and if it plays 27 boards, the multiplier will rise to 1.5! (The cap is there, at 27 boards, and no higher amount of boards played will increase the 1.5 multiplier.)Remember, this is about the number of boards you PLAY, not the number of boards IN PLAY. A 10-table game playing 8 rounds, at 3 boards/round will count as (8 x 3 = 24) boards played, even though there are 30 boards on the tables.Clubs don’t have to register; this will happen automatically. Just upload your games to your Live for Clubs results page, and watch the magic happen! Fine print: The “n/18” is presently only in place for “regular club masterpoint” games, but it will expand to all face-to-face games, no matter the rating, in the near future. This will be in place through June 30, 2025 (unless it’s renewed before that).
• ACBL has released the list of Special Events at Clubs, including the important ACBL-wide events.  Check this list, and then be sure to register your club for the ones you want to offer to your players. You may reacquaint yourself with the game formats using the “Club Manager Information” link, and then you can click “Register Your Club” right from the top of that page. It’s so terrific to see the return of all these fun events! Take advantage of the “Player Information” link at the top and email the .PDF out to your players to ratchet up their excitement, too!
• In person special events Club reference (with costs)
• Remember that face-to-face clubs may offer one Club Championship game per sanctioned session per calendar quarter, on top of the extra 8 weeks each club has been allotted for 2022.

Clubs are allowed to hold 2 concurrent limited games alongside an open.

• If attendance supports it, clubs may hold an open and 2 concurrent limited games both in their Virtual Club and their Face-to-Face club during the same session.
• You may also hold standalone limited games, 2 concurrently, without having an open game.

During Virtual Club Special Events, ACBL will allow clubs to hold an open and 3 concurrent limited games (instead of 2). This will maximize attendance, allowing players access to the Special Event masterpoints when they are available to play.

Any club will be allowed to hold 2 “mini-sessions” within one ACBL “Formal Session.” For example, if you hold a game with some number of boards, and you expect to finish in plenty of time to hold another one just like it before the next “Formal Session” starts, you may do this. “Formal Sessions” for purposes of this discussion:

• Games beginning prior to 12:00pm will be considered in the Morning session
• Games beginning between 12:00pm and 5:30pm will be considered in the Afternoon session
• All games that begin after 5:30 pm will be considered in the Evening session

Effective January 1, 2024, the sanction fees will increase from $1.10/table to $1.15/table. Your invoices on Live for Clubs will automatically reflect this small increase.

Also see https://acbl.org/club-corner/#virtual

Online Club Fee Rebate Program (OCF)

We have reconfigured the Online Club Fee Rebate Program (OCF) for 2024, to allow you to choose which one of these scenarios works best for you.

• The OCF is still $4 per table
• The first 50 tables will still be rebated 100% to protect small clubs. 
• ACBL has decided not to apply the OCF to NABC Fundraising games. When you run those, you will still be charged the additional table fee of $4, which will be sent in its entirety to the District hosting the upcoming NABC. The ACBL will not apply additional fees.
• Please choose your OCF Rebate:
  • v. 2024A:
    • Step 1 – Choose one pooled partner club (within your club’s same District).
    • Step 2 – Add your club’s F2F tables to your 1 partner’s F2F tables, and multiply by 2.
    • Step 3 – The OCF rebate will be $4 x the total in Step 2. Note that any perceived “overage” in rebate will only reduce the surcharge down to zero. Credits are not created, paid or maintained to offset future months’ deficits.
  • v. 2024B
    • Step 1 – Choose two pooled partner clubs (within your club’s same District).
    • Step 2 – Add your club’s F2F tables to your 2 partners’ F2F tables, and multiply by 1.25.
    • Step 3 – The OCF rebate will be $4 x the total in Step 2. Note that any perceived “overage” in rebate will only reduce the surcharge down to zero. Credits are not created, paid or maintained to offset future months’ deficits.
• All pooled partner clubs must agree to remain until 12/31/2024
• It is mandatory that you re-register your 2024 pooled partner(s). Please forward your choice of OCF rebate, and the club number(s) that you’ve chosen as pooled partners.  Kindly ask the club(s) to send their agreement to VACB@acbl.org. The deadline for this is 1/31/2024, (no exceptions), for February’s processing of your January games. 

Special Events Schedule

All special events scheduled for Virtual Clubs in 2024 are here: https://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/Clubs/OnlineCM2023.pdf – please bookmark this if you have not done so. That link is for Club Managers, because it contains any extra charges you will incur if you choose to run these events. This next link is for you to distribute to your players, as it is without cost information: https://acbl.org/portfolio/onlineevents/

All About Robots

• To seat a robot, simply click on the seat and choose Substitute. On the line, type the word robot.
• You may seat a “tempbot” at the beginning of the game, allowing yourself time to get a sub. It will “stand up and wait” when the first board is over, and you can then seat your sub. (On the sub-select screen, type tempbot instead of typing robot.)
• +hd+ Use this game hack and you will force the human partner of a robot to declare. The system will move the human to the robot seat if robot wins the contract, and will return the human to their own seat after the hand is completed. (This mimics the way that the BBO robot tournaments work.) This will also apply to any robots that you seat once the game begins, so long as the robot is seated before the auction ends. NOTE: this will also work with Tempbots.
• You may seat a sub to replace a robot AT ANY TIME, even in the middle of a hand, and even if the robot is declaring. (Not sure why we’d wish to put a new human in a seat in the middle of hand, when they can’t see what has thus far been played, but it is possible.)
• if the robot you are trying to replace is one that the player paid for at registration, you will be unable to sub this robot at all.
• if you pay for a robot partner, it’s a “smart robot.” If you seat a robot in place of a sit-out, that robot is a “basic robot.”
• Forum discussion about basic vs advanced robots: (Thanks, TDDon)
  https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/79182-basic-robots-vs-advanced/
• Robot 2/1 systems are described here.

About Saved Deals

• How to create and save hands directly on BBO for use later
• You already have your own hands, and you wish to upload them to BBO (must be in .lin format)
• How to add a set of saved deals to your games