Announcements

ACBL has eased up on some of the restrictions on having people from outside our club play in our Virtual Club Games.

New guidance from ACBL:

The rules for visiting Virtual Clubs on Bridge Base Online (BBO) have relaxed, letting you play more online bridge than ever. Previously, to join a Virtual Club you needed to have played face-to-face bridge at that club in the last year. Now you can play as a visitor!

If you used to play face-to-face bridge at that club but moved – you can play! If your partner is a regular at the club – you can join them! Some rules do apply. Virtual Clubs are limited to a certain percentage of visitors each week, and club managers still control who may access the Virtual Club.

Here’s how you can be a visitor:

From the BBO home screen, click on “Competitive.” At this point there are several options. One is “ACBL Virtual Clubs.” If you go there, you will only see games that you are able to play in as a non-visitor. In other words, these are clubs where we have a record of you playing in face-to-face over the last ~18 months.

If you wish to see other clubs, instead of going to “ACBL Virtual Clubs,” go to “All Tournaments.” This will produce a very long list.

To narrow that list down, you can type the name of a specific club into the search box at the top of the screen. Alternatively, if you wish to see all Virtual Club games, type “vacb” in the search box, and it will show you all Virtual Club games that are open for registration.

The club director of the Virtual Club you wish to attend will need to “follow” you in order for you to be able to register for their game. Quite often the club will put instructions for this in the “Details” tab. You can also send them a private message by clicking on the VACB number that is in the “Host” column in the list of tournaments

We need to acknowledge the passing of Bob Freeman. For many years, Bob and his wife Vi were bridge in our area. Along with Jim and Eleanor Rice, the two couples built and ran the Finesse Bridge Center on Country Club Road in the 1970s. When the two couples sold that facility, Bob and Vi moved their games first to the basement of the Eugene Hotel and later to the old Elks Lodge on Centennial Blvd. Shortly after we opened the Emerald Bridge Club, we held a game honoring Bob for all he had done for Bridge. At the time I gave him a life-time free pass for games at EBC. Bob said, “You must think I am not going to live that long if you are giving me a life-time pass.” I did counter that five years later. I said to Bob, “If I had known you were going to live this long, I would have put a time-stamp on it.” We would not have the Bridge community we have today without the efforts of Bob and his wife Vi. Rest In Peace.

Bob Freeman passed away on July 1, 2020. Along with his wife Vi, he was owner of the Finesse Bridge Center in Eugene a number of years ago.

Some of our members were acquainted with Bob and played at his club. If you knew Bob and would like to share some stories, please add a comment to this post.

You can read Bob’s obituary here.

You can also learn a little more about the history of bridge in Eugene by going to Community, History in our members section.

Our condolences go out to Bob’s family.

Check out the new BBO reference and training materials. Go to EBC on BBO, where you’ll find all-new materials, including video tutorials on getting the most out of your Virtual Club games on BBO.

We’ve added a Sunday game to our Virtual Club schedule at 6:30pm, making a game available every day of the week. We are constantly exploring new possibilities, and your feedback is always welcome. See you online!

It seems like a life-time ago that we were all playing at the club. Clearly it will be some time before we are back over there. Until then, we have Virtual Club. We are fortunate that ACBL created Virtual Club. It is the way we will be able to pay the rent and keep the building which means keeping bridge. The funds that were contributed by so many players to the special fund set up by the Unit would have been soon exhausted given how long this is all going. So “Thanks” to ACBL and “Thanks” to all the folks who have been playing in Virtual EBC.

There is no way of predicting when we will be able to open. Fall of 2021? Right now hard to imagine that it will be sooner than that.

We are adding another game. Sunday evening at 6:30.

The Saturday morning game will be 20 boards. Some folks have requested that we play more boards. Others much prefer the 18. So let’s add a couple of extra boards to the Saturday morning game as a start.

Please remember that you have to self-alert in Virtual. If you are not comfortable with this, check with us. It’s easy-peasy.

We miss all of you. Stay well. Stay safe.