Silicon Valley Youth Bridge


2016 Scoring

Pair Event

The Pairs Championship used Matchpoint scoring. In this form of scoring, a pair's score on each board is compared to other pairs holding their same cards. One matchpoint is awarded for each score a pair beats, and a half matchpoint for each tie. Every board is weighed equally. In this event, each deal was played 8 times, so the maximum score on each board (top) was 7 matchpoints. In a matchpoint game, pairs often look at their percentage to see how well they did, rather than their matchpoint total. An average game is 50%, and 60% is generally considered a very good result.

Fifteen high school pairs entered the Championship, so an ineligible pair of eighth graders played to fill out the eight table movement. There were 7 rounds of 3 boards per round, for a total of 21 boards played. Each N-S pair faced all but one of the E-W pairs, and each E-W pair faced all but one of the N-S pairs.

Note that the Team Championship Final played the same deals as the Pairs Championship, so both sets of scores are listed on the Pairs Recap. The teams’ results were converted to IMPs, while those who played in the Pairs Championship were scored by matchpoints.

Team Event

In the morning session, the six teams played a total of 20 boards - 4 boards against each opposing team. A team's net score was converted to IMPs, and then IMP scores were converted to Victory Points. Gunn HS won the Round Robin (see table, below) thereby qualifying for the final with a .5 IMP carryover, meaning that they would be Champions in the event of a tie. Palo Alto HS was 2nd in the Round Robin so qualified to face Gunn in the Championship Final. Monta Vista missed qualifying for the final by less than one full Victory Point.

In the Championship Final, a 24-board match was played in 2 12 board halves. Raw scores were converted to IMPs. Paly led by 33 IMPs when the teams compared at the halfway point. The second half was much closer, with Paly picking up another 11 IMPS to win by 44 IMPs (43.5 with the .5 carryover taken into account).