Scoring with Scorebridge

This guide is not intended to replace Scorebridge's comprehensive help pages. Rather, it outlines standard settings and procedures for Bath Bridge Club, and gives basic guidance for new scorers, focusing on elements that might otherwise be puzzling or be missed. You can either scroll through the sections, or click on the links.

1 Settings

An uninteresting but necessary stage - the good news is that it only has to be done once!
From the main Scorebridge screen, select Club, then Preferences. There are (alarmingly) eight lots of these, but don't worry - not much has to change!

  • Bridgemate preferences: Ignore. We don't use Bridgemate (yet).
  • Master point settings: Ignore - for the use of the MP Secretary only.
  • Results preferences: Wednesday scorers: tick 'Suppress display of Master Points'. Otherwise, ignore.
  • Swiss preferences: Ignore
  • Web page preferences (v. important, as these control the display on the Website results page)

2 Scoring an event

Once you're used to it, this can be a very quick and easy procedure. There are four stages:

3 Processing the results

Nearly there! There are just three more things left to do, two now and one later:

Section 1: SETTINGS

Player preferences

All boxes should be ticked. For the EBU county select ALL. Should look like this:

(Wednesday scorers using their own player database: uncheck the bottom two boxes, as these are relevant only for allocation of Master points.)

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Scoring preferences

Leave the default settings except for the option shown below. As recommended by the EBU, we use the Neuberg method of scoring (not the 'Simple' method that Scorebridge defaults to). You should therefore select Neuberg as shown:

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Standard Output preferences

Nothing very interesting here. Select the ones shown below. Leave the other options (not shown here to save space) blank.

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Web page preferences

We have a 'house style' for the Web page which displays the results. Settings are as shown below. In particular:
- Scorebridge needs to be told to include Personal Scorecards
- You can select a folder to save the webpage (I find it easier to do this and attach it to the email myself, than to use the program's rather odd built-in method), and you can also set it so that you name the file yourself. It helps at our end if you copy our 6-digit example below (YYMMDD)
- Please set the colours as shown below (for the shade of grey, see even more below).
- Ask it to omit the 'Back to Main menu' link. It isn't needed.

To turn the headings grey, click on the word 'Headings'. You'll get a 'font' dialog box. Dismiss this, and underneath there's a colour-picking dialog box. Not that it's hugely important, but this is the shade of grey:

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Section 2: SCORING AN EVENT

Starting a new event

  • Date: SB offers today's date, which is fine if you're scoring the same evening. Otherwise, adjust!
  • Description: Please enter the name of the director and the name of the scorer for this (e.g. as shown below). There's a 40-character maximum. The event description, as you enter it, will appear on your paper printouts of the result. The Webmaster will rewrite the description in full form before posting the result.
  • Number of tables: include half tables. You tell the program about any missing pair later on.

Note: Merging two movements
In case of a large number of tables, you may have a dual movement that you have to merge. In this case, you score the two movements as two separate events, each with the same name, but label them A and B (using the Section Letter box shown above). Later, you simply select the two events from the event list and click on the Merge Events button - and the job's done.

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Selecting a movement

This is very simple, but can baffle newcomers! The essentials are as follows:

  • Be sure you know the details of the movement (Mitchell or Skip Mitchell?; how many tables?; a half table? which pair missing?; how many rounds played?) before leaving the Club. Check with the Director!
  • If it's a normal Bath BC event, either choose simply Mitchell (with an odd no of tables) or one of the Skip Mitchell options (with an even no of tables). It is NEVER necessary to make up your own movement!
  • You don't tell Scorebridge how many rounds were played. Instead you tell it how many rounds were not played. In other words, the program assumes a full movement, and you tell it if your event fell short of that. Examples of odd and even nos of tables are given below.

Straight Mitchell
Here's the start-up screen for a 9-table Mitchell movement. Scorebridge (rightly) defaults to 3 boards per round, and needs to know whether all nine rounds were played (see the highlighted zero, bottom left). If only 8 rounds were played, you enter 1 in the rounds-not-played-at-end box. Otherwise, leave it as zero.

Skip Mitchell
With an even number of tables, the program offers you a 'full' skip Mitchell (in which pairs eventually meet their original opponents again - a version we don't play at Bath BC) or (sensibly) a version with one fewer rounds than the number of tables. It doesn't matter which you choose, provided you put the right number in the rounds-not-played box. In the example below, there were 16 tables, and 13 two-board rounds were played. The scorer has chosen Mitchell Skip 15 Rounds, and entered 2 (= 15 minus 13) in the rounds-not-played box bottom left.


When you've entered the movement data, press OK. Scorebridge will display a 'plan' of the play. Here's the one for the nine-table Mitchell above:

It's best just to check the coloured columns of numbers against two or three of your travellers - they should be the same (when adjusted for any half table - see the caution below). If so, press Yes, and you can start entering players' names.

HALF TABLE CAUTION: Remember that Scorebridge is not yet aware of any missing pairs, so in producing the scoresheets above, it has assumed 9 full tables. Obviously if you have a missing pair, the scoresheets above won't match your travellers. For example, if the missing pair is EW 7, the pairing NS4-EW7 shown above on Boards 1-3 will not be on the travellers. But don't worry - by the time you get to enter the scores, the program will know exactly who was playing where, and everything will match up.

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Entering players' names

Scorebridge makes this very quick and easy: the empty pairs list is on the left, the player database on the right (click off the ever-present SB Help window if that's obscuring the database). You simply double-click on a name and it is added to the list. And when you've finished (checking in passing that you haven't accidentally mixed up a NS and EW because they unkindly wrote the EW pair above the NS pair on the traveller), press the OK/Save button.

Two nice features:

  • It only takes a click to switch between first name and last name alphabetical order in the player database.
  • Scorebridge has a 'regular partners' feature. If you're using the official club database, many of these will have been set up for you already (and you can always go to the player database and set others up yourself). When you're entering such a pair, simply triple-click on one of the names and both will be added to the list.

Two important points:

Missing pair

This is the stage at which you inform Scorebridge about any missing pair. You simply leave those two slots empty. When you have finished inputting the names, the program will ask you for confirmation before continuing.

Visitors and new members
(This only applies to scorers using the official Bath BC database. If you're a Wednesday scorer using your own database, skip this section. Otherwise, read carefully!)

You will notice that there is a list of dummy names at the start of the database. These are for use when there is a visitor (or a new member not yet on the database). When you come across a new name, do NOT follow the procedure laid down by Scorebridge. Instead, do the following:

  • go to the player database ( press the Player database button)
  • RENAME the first dummy name on your particular list (Tues, Wed, Thurs), ticking 'visitor' unless you're sure the player is a new member.
  • Then click OK to go back to name allocation, and choose the new player's name in the normal way.
  • When you have finished scoring, email Trevor (or, better, all scorers) with details of any changes, for incorporation into their own version of the database.

(For those interested, the reason for this is that Scorebridge keeps records not by name but by the underlying number it allocates to a player. If a player ends up with different numbers on different scorers' databases, this will play havoc with the allocation of master points.)

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Entering the scores

The fun bit at last! Set the Score Line Order to Order Played, as shown, and the layout should be exactly the same as on the travellers.

You'll soon develop your preferred way of entering the scores. A couple of pointers:

  • You can either arrow-key left and right as required between NS and EW, or, if you prefer, select the busiest line (in this case, NS) and stay there, using a minus sign for the three EW scores.
  • To repeat the same score for the next pair, simply press Enter.
  • The default is that you don't have to key in the final zero.
  • Keep an occasional eye on the screen - it can be messy if the numbers get out of kilter. If they do, best clear the board and score it again.

When you have entered the final score for each board, matchpoints are displayed instantly - which is nice if you were playing Pair 6 NS on this one. (It's worth having a last quick check for accuracy before moving on to the next board - only takes a moment, as the numbers are in exactly the same places on the screen and on the travellers.)

Finally, press the All done button to go the Results screen.

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Printing the results

Nothing to it . First, look at the results to see how well you did. (If you're scoring a Wednesday game, also check that no Master Points have been awarded - if they have, pop up to the Preferences menu and switch them off.) Then make sure you have a printer connected, go to the Print menu in the title bar and print:

  • Results without matrix
  • All travellers

Put the printouts in a folder together with the original travellers (write the date on board 1) and (if you have one) a printout of the hands, ready to take to the club.

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Producing and emailing the results webpage

Still on the results page, you now deal with the webpage.

Make the webpage. To do this select Make Web Page from the Web Page menu in the title bar.

Save the webpage. If you've set your Web Page preferences as recommended in Section 1 above, you will now have the chance to save the webpage with a name of your choice.

  • It helps at our end if you give the file a 6-digit name based on the date of the match, in the order year-month-day: e.g. if the match was played on March 18 2007, call it 070318. This is the name it will end up with on the website.
  • The program will default to the folder/directory that you nominated when you set the preferences (although you are free to save elsewhere now if you wish).

Email the webpage to the webgroup. You can do this in either of two ways. The Scorebridge method is to select Web Page by email from the Send menu in the title bar. This works perfectly well, but I find it non-intuitive, and prefer to use the second method: to email it to the webgroup myself, attaching the file from the folder where I know it lives, as I would with any other attachment.

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Emailing the event file

(This only applies to Tuesday and Thursday scores.)

Every three months, the Master Points Secretary submits to the EBU a record of the Master Points earned during the quarter, and to do this needs the event files of all relevant matches. It's best not to submit event files immediately, as errors may be found when the results are published and need to be corrected.

The Secretary will ask for the event files at the relevant time. Again, you have two ways of doing this. Either use the Scorebridge method (via the Send menu) or locate the BridgeData folder where the event files live (they feature the date, have lots of exclamation marks in them and end in .dat) and attach them to emails in the normal way.

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Happy scoring!

Chris Jones, Nov 2006