The Big Boat Race Shoves Off

Wednesday players at both Cambridge and Tauranga played the same hands on the 14th of August - as they will on the 21st and 28th. This is not abnormal - it happens with every session of bridge at about one third of clubs in NZ. It is part of a scheme called X-Clubs which scores across the results of many clubs. The reason for this arrangement is to slot everyone's results into a wider spectrum so the percentages are more meaningful. It takes about 120 pairs for the results to settle down to +/-0.5% of what they would be in a huge field. On this night there were 215 pairs from 12 clubs involved - 52 pairs from our two clubs.

So .. on the X-Clubs website you have the Tauranga X-Club raw scores and the Cambridge X-Club raw scores to look at each week when you want to see the official results of how you did at your club. The usual results will not be appearing on our respective site as The Big Boat Race is based on comparing the X-Clubs results for each club. The club with the better average of its Handicap Results will win the Big Boat Race trophy. When you look at this last link to the Handicap Ladder, click on any column heading (notably the Club heading) to sort by that column. Note - you cannot see the hand details in these Ladder files.

A word about how we arrive at global handicaps .. these are calculated each week based on all X-Club sessions you have played .. up to the last 2000 hands. They are called XG ratings - a model for a National Grading (NG) system. The methodology involves considering your XG, your partner's XG and the average XG of the room for each session you played in. Combining these factors sets you a target for each session - if you beat it your XG can increase next week and if you do not achieve it your XG may go down - other factors can influence the movement a little.

Last night's tabulation: