Learn • American Contract Bridge League

A

ABOVE THE LINE. A phrase denoting all scores in rubber bridge entered above a horizontal line on the score sheet, including penalties and the premiums for honors, slams, rubbers, overtricks and fulfilling a doubled or redoubled contract.

ACBL RANK CLASSIFICATIONS. https://www.acbl.org/masterpoints-results/masterpoint-ranks/

ACCORDING TO HOYLE. A phrase indicating that a procedure is sanctioned legally and ethically and that it has the backing of custom. Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769) was the noted authority on card games in his lifetime. His reputation was so great that the phrase “According to Hoyle” came to mean correct procedure in general.

ACCREDITED TEACHERS. Accredited Teachers earn the title by successfully completing ACBL’s Teacher Accreditation Program (TAP). The TAP was created in 1986 as part of ACBL’s new Bridge Education Program. It is a 10-hour seminar designed by Audrey Grant, a Canadian educator, to develop new bridge teachers and to introduce them to ACBL’s Teaching Series. Many established bridge teachers have participated in the TAP as a form of continuing education and are also accredited teachers. Interested ACBL members and volunteer workers have taken the TAP course and have earned the title of ACBL Accredited Teacher.

Xem thêm: How Long Does It Take to Become a Welder? – WaterWelders

Special programs for Accredited Teachers are offered at each NABC. These include dinner meetings and special workshops/seminars. A quarterly newsletter, The Bridge Teacher, is published by ACBL and contains news of the organization’s activities, teaching tips, special funded teaching programs and general information of interest to this group.

ACE-HIGH. This describes a suit held by one player in which the ace is the top card without other top honors.

ACTIVE ETHICS. Actions to enable all players to have equal access to methods and understandings used by their opponents. The concept was first broached by Hall of Famer Bobby Wolff during his tenure as president of the ACBL in 1987. According to Wolff, Active Ethics has nothing to do with such items as score corrections – players are supposed to make sure they have the right scores whether or not the adjustment favors them. Instead, Wolff characterized Active Ethics as the desire not to take advantage – the desire to make sure that the opponents are privy to all of a partnership’s conventions, treatments, habits and idiosyncrasies. “The game itself is more important than winning,” said Wolff.

AGGREGATE SCORE. The same as total-point scoring.

ALERT. The word used by a player to make sure the opponents are aware that the Alerter’s partner has made a bid that has a conventional or unusual meaning.

Xem thêm: How to play Monopoly Frozen II | Official Rules – UltraBoardGames

ALERTING. A method of drawing the opponents’ attention to the fact that a particular bid has a conventional or unusual meaning.

ANNOUNCEMENT. Part of the ACBL’s Alert procedure. An Announcement is one word or a short phrase that tells the opponents directly the meaning of partner’s call. When bidding boxes are used, the “Alert” strip is tapped also. For example after a natural 1NT opening bid, the partner of the bidder will say aloud, “15 to 17.”

ARRANGEMENT OF TRICKS. In duplicate bridge, the act of turning a card face down on the edge of the table immediately in front of a player after four cards have been played to a trick, with the long axis of the card pointing to the players who won the trick. In rubber bridge, the act of collecting the cards played to a trick by a member of the side that won the trick and then turning them face down on the table so that the tricks are identifiable in proper sequence.

ATTITUDE SIGNAL. The interest or lack of interest of a defender in having a suit led or continued by his partner. The usual method of encouraging the lead or continuation of a suit is a high-low signal. Low-high is discouraging.

AUCTION. The bidding sequence made by the four players for the contract. The first call is made by the dealer, who may pass or bid. Thereafter, each player makes a valid call, the bidding continuing in a clockwise direction. The bidding ends when, after the dealer’s initial bid, there are three consecutive passes. The final contract is the last bid, which may have been doubled or redoubled.

Xem thêm: Timeline of Earning a GED: How Long Does It Take to Earn a GED?

AUTHORIZED INFORMATION. Information legally available. This includes information such as meanings of calls, explanations of the Laws and methods used to show count and attitude.

AVERAGE HAND. A hand that contains 10 high-card points. An ace, king, queen and jack, or one-fourth of all the high honors, is the average expectation of each player before the hands are seen. This basic assumption furnishes the player with a simple yardstick for measuring the relative high-card strength of a given hand, and may assist materially in estimating the game potential or penalty expectancy of any bid. Hence, two or three points added to an average hand is the valuation of a hand with a minimum opening bid.

AVERAGE SCORE. One-half the matchpoints possible on a given deal or in a particular session of a matchpoint pairs tournament.

In IMP pairs games, average on a given board is the arithmetical mean of all scores on that board, usually excluding the highest and the lowest. This constructed average is called a datum.

The average score is usually the basis on which adjusted scores are awarded when a particular deal cannot be properly played. When the deal cannot be played through no fault of one pair, the adjustment is usually 60% of the available matchpoints. Deduction from the average score is made by the tournament director when one of the pairs is at fault. These adjustments are referred to as average-plus and average-minus.