The EBUTA newsletter October 2014 . E B U T A 1 October 2014 Contents Editorial 3 The End of ebuta99 4 An important new initiative 4 Acol is Dead, long live Acol! 5 -7 Teachers Jamboree – an update 7 Three important principles 8-9 From the wilds of Aylesbury 10 A word about copyright 11 Have you got an App? 11 Cardiff Bridge Tutors 12-13 Calling All Cruise Tutors 13 Developments with VuBridge 14 Events Congresses and Tournaments 15 -16 Full and Professional Corner 17-18 Your EBUTA Membership 18 Offers and Promotions 19-22 From the Wilds of Aylesbury (cont’d) 22-23 2 Editorial – Simon Barb A lot has been happening since the last issue of Accolade and it is my pleasure to be able to share this information with you. With effect from April 1 2014 the EBU devolved many of the functions that were previously under its Education Department to a new independent charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) called English Bridge Education & Development (EBED). EBUTA remains part of the English Bridge Union. There were two major reasons for this change. First, it was felt that the scale and importance of the challenges faced in promoting bridge to the widest possible community required a separate organisation, which could devote itself single-mindedly to this task. Secondly, the government in the 2011 Charities Act created a range of financial incentives for not-for-profit organisations with public benefit objectives to establish themselves as CIO’s. Among these are the ability to reclaim tax on Gift Aid donations and various VAT advantages. EBED’s two objectives are: (1) the advancement of amateur sport by promoting the game of duplicate bridge for the public benefit. (2) the advancement of the education of young persons in full time education in the playing of duplicate bridge You will be hearing a lot more about EBED in the coming months, but you may have already noticed certain changes. The day-to-day management and organisation of Bridge for All has moved to EBED and you are now invoiced by EBED for any Bridge for All material, which you may order. Lisa Miller, whom many of you will know, remains the Bridge for All Co-ordinator and her contact details are the same as before. EBED is located in the same offices as the EBU and uses the same systems as the EBU, so we hope that there will be minimal inconvenience or dislocation from your point of view. Secondly, we have been making some significant changes in our web presence. We now have a website www.ebedcio.org.uk , which will become the primary home for all bridge education matters (except EBUTA). This new website has all the information that was previously on the EBU webpages, but even more accessible and with refreshed content. Do please check it for yourself and let us have your views. Readers of the existing EBU website pages for education (but not for EBUTA) will gradually find themselves being redirected to the EBED website for the latest and most up-to-date information. You may find some switching between the two websites a little disconcerting at first, but we hope that this will soon disappear. 3 The End of ebuta99 While on the subject of webpages, we have also changed the way in which EBUTA members access the Teacher’s Zone webpages. This means that the webpage where you used to input "ebuta99" has now gone. Instead, Teachers should log onto their EBU Members Page, and looking down on the right hand side of the page towards the bottom, they will see a link for the EBUTA Teachers Zone. As part of this change, any bookmarks that people have used to bypass the logon page will no longer work and, additionally, the pages will not appear in a Google search. I realise that this may cause some inconvenience to those teachers who access these pages, but the old system provided no security for our valuable intellectual property - probably our single most valuable asset after our people. It is our intention over the coming months to increase the amount of information that is available and downloadable without charge from our website, a step, which, we believe, will further enhance the value of EBUTA membership. EBUTA remains a members’ organisation and we survive on the subscription, which you pay for us to continue our work. It therefore seems right that we should take reasonable steps to restrict our know-how and information to those who are bona fide members of EBUTA. .... An Important new Initiative Whether talking to teachers or clubs, we continually hear about the challenge of how to get more people out of the classroom and into the club. But we also know that there are many people who we are not even getting into the classroom! One of the prime reasons for their reluctance is that the time investment in learning before one can play a “proper” game is perceived as being too great. It is of course totally understandable that learners get “stage fright” when moving from the nurturing environment of supervised play to the more “rough and tumble” of the club playground. What can we do about this? The Trustees of EBED are keen to address this issue head on by encouraging the development of an accelerated teaching program which will offer students a route to be playing in a matter of weeks, or perhaps a few months, rather than the more normal year, which is our target under our existing Bridge for All Of course, not all students will be ready for the kind of intensive approach which will be necessary to get them to the competitive game that quickly. 4 Nonetheless, we are sure that this will appeal to younger audiences who are “in a hurry” as well as those who have the resilience and determination to master the key elements of play and bidding. We are at an early stage of our thinking about how best to develop this approach into a standardised tool which can have widespread application and which EBUTA members will want to adopt as part of their teaching armoury. Do please feel free to write to us and share your thoughts on what such a program might look like and whether you would be interested in being part of an accelerated teaching program. We’d be delighted to hear from you! .... Acol is dead – long live Acol! In line with current Laws & Ethics practices, EBED and Bridge for All will be phasing out use the term “Standard English Acol”. Why are we doing this and what are we replacing it with? What is Acol today? Walk round a duplicate club in England today and 90% or more of the players will have the word ACOL emblazoned in masthead position on their convention cards But delve a little closer and you will find huge variations among these players. Not just weak two’s versus strong two’s but: 1. Weak No Trumps and Strong No Trumps 2. Multi 2 Diamond openings 3. 1C openings showing 3,2, or even 1 card as the minimum length guaranteed by a 1C opening 4. Five card majors or just five card spades 5. 2 over 1 forcing to 2NT or to game 6. Jacoby 2NT responses to one of a major opening bids 7. Transfer responses to 1C opening bid etc. etc. Bewildering – but perfectly legal! So under these circumstances, the EBU stopped deciding what was or was not Acol. It simply gave broad rules regarding what types of treatment were allowed. These rules have recently been further simplified in the Blue Book – the handbook of permitted understandings. How others do it? In France, almost all players use a system of 5-card majors and strong no trump called “Le Système d’Enseignement français” – which means literally “the French method of teaching”. This system is supported and “administered” by the “Fédération française de Bridge”. This works well for the FFB in a number of ways: as the ultimate arbiter of what is 5 and is not part of SEF, they can sell all manner of guides and textbooks, which teach this system without too much competition. On the positive side, it also creates a very homogeneous, and therefore safe, environment for new players to acclimatise themselves to duplicate play. Unfortunately, we Anglo-Saxons love competition and the EBU has gone a different route - and while there are those who might perhaps love the EBU to lay down the law and make everyone comply meekly with our (excellent) Really Easy Books, there would be a hue and cry at just about every level of the game if they did so. As an example, you can just imagine the furore if the EBU decided that weak two’s were now standard! In America, the idea of a standard system was driven by the great marketers, Ely Culbertson and Charles Goren – again, these pioneers were making their living by selling a bridge system and went to great lengths to show the supposed superiority of one system versus another. Standard American Yellow Card is similarly promulgated by the American Contract Bridge League – but in its “pure” form it is rarely found in tournament play today. Why Acol? The name Acol is derived from the name of a bridge club in North West London located originally at 15, Acol Road. Among the key players who developed the system in the mid-1930’s were Maurice Harrison-Grey, S J (Skid) Simon and Jack Marx. Acol was a byword for a natural style of bidding.