CLUB POLICIES

Revised: 24 December 2023

GENERAL CONDUCT

Jourdan’s Palm Beach is a non-smoking and non-vaping club. Use of these products at the Club venue is not permitted.

Jourdan’s adheres to the ACBL Zero Tolerance (ZT) guidelines. Violators of ZT will be warned on any first offense, and will be subject to score adjustment and expulsion for repeated occurrences. Please be respectful of opponents, partners, and Club staff.

LATE ARRIVALS AT GAME TIME and NO-SHOWS

All games have a published start time. Please try to arrive at NO LESS than 5 minutes before the scheduled start of the game.

Ø If you are on your way and are running late, please call the Club and let us know that you are on your way.

Ø If you have already registered for the game and cannot attend, please call the club and let us know.

If you arrive unannounced and the game has already started, you will only be accommodated if your addition does not affect the structure of the game.

We want players to attend our games, but repeated tardiness is rude to all concerned.

SCORE CORRECTION POLICY

If you find an error in the posted recap sheet, contact the game director as soon as possible. There will be no changes after 24 hours. The Club utilizes electronic scoring (Bridgemate II units) to minimize clerical and transposition errors in scoring. If the contract, declarer, or result was posted incorrectly, and the correction will benefit your opponents, then the Director will make the appropriate change… if the correction will benefit your partnership, the Director will attempt to contact the opposing pair and see whether they agree that the result is in error. Note: Best policy is to check the Bridgemate result whether you are east, west, or even south before proceeding to the next hand or round.

PLAYING DIRECTOR

Generally, the game Director will not schedule a partner to play. However, if an unpaired player wishes to play in the game, the Director will play in the game, regardless of whether that will make a half-table or not. Nobody that shows up to play will be turned away arbitrarily. If there is a resulting sit-out, the Director will usually try to assure that the sit-out is in the same direction as the playing Director.

However, if you arrive at the game without a partner and another player arrives similarly without a partner, you will be paired with that player. Anyone that refuses to play with such another unpaired player will not be similarly accommodated in the future.

NUMBER OF BOARDS PER SESSION

As a rule, games will consist of (at least) 24 boards for all players. If a game is conducted with a sit-out because there is a half-table, all players will play 24 boards or more. If a game consists of more than 24 boards, and the pace of play is extremely slow, the Director may elect to terminate the game one round early. Exceptions to this general guideline are evening games that are, by intent, one round shorter than normal, and any Newcomer Game(s) that are also, by intent, time-limited.

STRATIFICATION

Rather than use fixed strata for all games, the games are stratified at the director's discretion, according to the players who are present at the game.

Usually, the games are stratified so that there are at least 4 pairs in the lowest strata in each field. The point holdings of pairs (occasionally the highest point holder in a pair, but usually the average of the two) varies considerably from day-to-day and even week-to-week on the same day.

Why have four pairs in the "C" strat? Because the ACBL awards at least the top two of the four "C" strat pairs masterpoints regardless of their scores. If one of those pairs has considerably more points than the other 3 "C" pairs, and was moved into the "B" strat, then only one "C" strat pair is guaranteed points. Of course, "C" strat pairs can earn higher "B" and "A" strat points by outscoring "B" and/or "A" pairs.

RESTRICTIONS ON METHODS

In general, any method NOT DISALLOWED on the ACBL's Open Convention Chart is permissible. Please check with a director before using any method that would be ‘unexpected’ at a Club game; it may suggest a Pre-Alert.

We use the ACBL's alerting and announcing guidelines. Those guidelines are documented on the ACBL Alert Chart.