The following terms apply in addition to the relevant definitions listed in Chapter one of The Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge, 1997.
On initially joining the ABF, members are issued with an ABF number (also known as a masterpoint number). These numbers are issued for the duration of a member’s playing lifetime.
Players are registered with the ABF through their home club. However, to ensure that they appear on the masterpoint schedules at other clubs where they are also members, they should be registered as alternate members.
Eclectic events are competitions where a competing pair does not have to play in every session, but, in order to be eligible for an outright award, needs to play in a specified minimum number of sessions. A common example is a competition where final placings are determined by the total of each pair’s best 3 scores from the 4 available sessions.
Registered players are registered with the ABF through their nominated home club. All Masterpoint Centre output for individual players (e.g. promotion certificates) is forwarded to the player’s home club.
A competition where contestants play with several different partners during a session. Session winners get the Howells award for that number of tables, final placing awards are determined by the number of tables (not the number of contestants).
For the purpose of calculating awards, a session shall consist of not less than 24 boards. If fewer than the minimum number of boards (24, or 15 for Grade F) and at least 12 boards have been played then the session awards are factored down accordingly (ref. clause 4.4.7). If the movement has a half table then those players having a sit out should have the missed boards counted when their session awards are determined.
These are single winner multi-session events in which players must have several partnerships, each partnership being of at least one session’s duration. To be eligible for an outright award a player shall have played in a number of partnerships, this number being not less than one third of the minimum number of sessions required to be eligible for a final placing (rounded upwards), e.g. at least two different partnerships are required for a competition in which the best 4 scores are counted.
The sum of the total number of tables in play for each session of an event.
These are tournaments for which entrants must be of the age of 70, or over, at the date of the start of the competition (unless stated otherwise). For a list of possible Veterans' State Championships see clause 6.2.2.