Bridge Tournaments

A bridge tournament is a competition in which a whole field of pairs or teams plays the same set of boards and is ranked on how each result compares with the others. Luck in the deal mostly cancels out, because every score is set against those of players who held the same cards.

The machinery is the same as at a club. Pairs events are usually scored by matchpoints, where each board is a small contest against the field, and team events by IMPs, which scale the difference between two tables so a single big swing cannot decide the match. The duplicate bridge guide explains boards, movements, matchpoints and IMPs in full, the IMP table gives the conversion, and bridge scoring covers the trick scores that feed both. A tournament director runs the event, applies the Laws when there is an irregularity, and publishes the ranking.

Placing in a sanctioned event earns masterpoints, the ranking awards a national federation keeps for each player.

Events come in two kinds. An open event is open to anyone, and that includes the strongest players in the country. A restricted or limited event caps who may play, usually by masterpoint holding (a "0 to 750" pairs, say, for players with fewer than 750 points) and sometimes by age, as in senior and youth championships.

Tournaments are graded by size and status, and the grade decides how many masterpoints are on offer and of what kind. North America has the clearest ladder, run by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL).

A sectional draws players from a city or county for pairs and team games over two or three days. A regional is bigger, draws from several states or provinces, and offers knockout teams, Swiss teams and pairs events at several masterpoint levels every day. The Gatlinburg regional in Tennessee, usually held in the spring, has long been billed as the largest of them, with more than 10,000 tables over the week at its peak. The colored points matter because Life Master and the ranks above it require a share of a player's total to be won at tournaments.

Other countries have their own ladders. In England the English Bridge Union runs county events and weekend congresses, and its green points, awarded at congresses and national events, are the tier that counts for the higher EBU ranks. The Australian Bridge Federation, the national federations across Europe and most others run a similar mix of club, regional and national events under their own point schemes.

The NABC is the North American Bridge Championships, the ACBL's three national tournaments held each year in spring, summer and fall. Each lasts about ten days in a different city and draws several thousand players.

An NABC runs two programs at once. The NABC+ championship events are the national titles and award platinum points. Alongside them run regional-rated side games, Swiss teams and pairs events with lower stakes and the same red and gold points as a regional.

Each tournament has its own signature teams event. The Vanderbilt, at the spring NABC, is a knockout teams championship first played in 1928 on a trophy donated by Harold Vanderbilt himself. The Spingold, at the summer NABC, is the other great knockout, played since 1934. The Reisinger, at the fall NABC, is a board-a-match teams event, in which each board is simply won, lost or tied, so every overtrick counts.

The major pairs titles sit beside them. The Life Master Pairs, held at the summer NABC, is open only to Life Masters. The Blue Ribbon Pairs, at the fall NABC, and the Platinum Pairs, at the spring NABC, both require players to qualify through earlier results. Most other NABC+ events are open to any ACBL member, and some, such as the Mini-Spingold and the Mini-Blue Ribbon, are limited by masterpoints to give developing players a national title of their own.

The world bridge championships are the events of the World Bridge Federation (WBF), contested by national teams that qualify through their zones and by open fields at the same venues.

In odd years the WBF holds four team championships together. The Bermuda Bowl is the open world teams championship, first played in Bermuda in 1950 and now held every second year. The Venice Cup is the women's championship, first played in 1974. The d'Orsi Senior Bowl is for senior teams, and the Wuhan Cup, first played in 2019, is for mixed teams. All four start with a round robin, and the leading eight teams go through to knockout matches. The Transnational Open Teams runs alongside, open to anyone, with teams of any mix of nationalities.

In even years the program alternates. Every fourth year the World Bridge Games brings national teams together in open, women's, senior and mixed series. It is the successor to the World Team Olympiad and falls in the same years as the Summer Olympics. In the even years between, the World Bridge Series offers events anyone may enter, led by the Rosenblum Cup for open teams and the World Open Pairs. The WBF also runs the World Youth Championships for teams and pairs in several age bands.

The history of these events, from the first Bermuda Bowl to the long run of the Italian Blue Team, is told in the history of bridge guide.

The European Bridge League (EBL) runs the championships for Europe's national federations.

• The European Team Championships, held in even years, are national team events in open, women's, senior and mixed series. The leading teams qualify for the next Bermuda Bowl and its companion events.
• The European Champions Cup, first held in 2002, brings together club teams that won their national club championships in the leading European federations. It is usually played in November.
• The Open European Championships, held in odd years, run teams and pairs events that anyone may enter.
• The European Winter Games, usually held in February, are an open entry teams event and one of the few major championships that has offered prize money.
• The European Youth Championships run teams and pairs events for junior players in several age bands.

Many federations and clubs also run open festivals of pairs and teams over a week or a long weekend, where stars and holiday players share the same field. The Reykjavik Bridge Festival in Iceland is usually played in late January, the Biarritz festival in France in July, and the Australian National Championships in July. Others with a long history include the Vilnius Cup in Lithuania, the Pula festival in Croatia, the Ostend festival in Belgium and the Oslo Cup in Norway, all usually in the summer or early autumn, and a festival in São Paulo in Brazil. The Asia Pacific Bridge Federation holds its championships usually every two years.

The large online platforms run tournaments around the clock, including daily robot events in which you and a robot partner play the same boards as thousands of others. Many federations sanction online games that award masterpoints. Since 2020 both the WBF and the EBL have run championships online, several of them on RealBridge, a platform with video at the table.

This site has two small formats of its own, the Suit Cup, a seeded knockout on suit combinations, and the one-on-one duels of the Suit Trainer.

Five things need sorting out before a first tournament.

1. 1.A partner. For a pairs event you need one, and for a team event you need three teammates as well. Most tournaments have a partnership desk for players who arrive alone.
2. 2.A federation number. Sanctioned events record results against your membership number, so join your national federation (the ACBL, the EBU or your own country's) before you go.
3. 3.The entry fee. In North America it is usually paid per session, and elsewhere often per event, at the door or online in advance.
4. 4.A convention card. Both members of a pair fill in the same card for the opponents to read. The convention card editor prints one, and the SAYC guide is a sensible starting system.
5. 5.The right event. Most tournaments run newcomer games and events limited to players with few masterpoints, such as a 0 to 50 or a 0 to 300 pairs.

A typical session lasts three to four hours and covers 24 to 27 boards, usually two or three at each table before the movement sends you on. Your entry slip gives your table and direction, and the seats are named North, South, East and West as at a club. After each board one player enters the contract and result into a Bridgemate or similar electronic scorer, which shows how the board was scored at the other tables once everyone has played it. If something goes wrong, a lead out of turn or an insufficient bid, call the director rather than settling it yourselves.

Results are usually posted within minutes of the end of the session, on a screen in the playing area and on the federation's website, with a board-by-board record of every table's score. A glossary of the words you will hear at an event, from board to movement, is in bridge terms, and history of bridge tells how the big events came to be.