Café Bridge webpages

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Welcome to brianbridge.net's café bridge pages. Here you can find information about café bridge, as well as a schedule of of café bridge drives and bridge rallies happening around London, the south-east of England, and neighbouring countries.

Organizing a Café Bridge

This page addresses how to organise a duplicate pairs event over multiple cafés and restaurants. Pairs move to a new venue after each round, guided by a movement card or roadbook, while board sets do not move. The registration fee typically covers bridge, plus refreshments at the venues, for instance lunch, or for a drink at each stop.

When?

Tasks

Once the date has been set, and the approximate event size established, the tasks can be divided into five categories:

• Venues - Making arrangements with the managers of the venues where registration, play and prizegiving will take place
• Bookkeeping - Keeping track of paid-up entries, dietary requirements and other booking details, issuing refunds
• Bridge - Acquiring the bridge equipment, planning the movement, preparing stationery, running the bridge
• Publicity and communication - Making local players and others aware of the event, answering requests for information.
• Charity - Liaising with charity, running auxiliary fundraising activities e.g. a raffle or auction, arranging for the charity to be represented at the event, seeking sponsorship.

Café bridge can be run with as few as three venues providing two tables each. The venues do not all need to provide the same number of tables. The closer the venues are to each other, the more venues you can have each player visit. If the venues are all on the same stretch of road, you can have them play eight rounds, all in different venues. Further away, and you may wish to limit the number of moves to seven, six or five.

Bridge organizers and restaurant staff each subject to misconceptions about the other's area.
Here are some of the more common ones. Bridge organizers:

• may expect the restaurant to be open earlier than it is
• may expect them to know that lunch is scheduled within a certain time period with a finish as well as a start
• may not anticipate that manager whom they have made arrangements with will be replaced before the event
• may expect arrangements made verbally to be remembered

• may not anticipate that they have to open 10 minutes early to allow the equipment to be set out
• may expect to be given menu choices several days in advance, i.e. before it is known which players are eating there

Pricing

You can offer lunch, or a drink in each venue, as part of the registration fee. Prices vary regionally; here are some examples:

It is not usual for restaurants to expect any advance payment or deposit; they are typically paid on the evening of the event. Some venues will try to offer a two-course menu where players can choose either a starter or a dessert to go with their main. You should not allow players to be offered this choice, since it makes lunch take longer. Starter and main is preferred over main and dessert, as players can buy their own dessert later.

Opening times

Large events

• The venue(s) for registration and assembly need to be large enough to hold the entire cohort. If none of the restaurants is large enough for this, civic spaces or churches are used. It is also possible, with a little extra work, to arrange for different groups of players to register at different venues.
• Score accumulation time Special expertise or will be needed to announce on on-time result. Typically many people will start to wander off at most twenty minutes after the last round scheduled end time. They can be kept a bit longer with a raffle and a speech from the charity, and access to a bar.

Cancellations

No-shows and standby pairs

Movements

The circuit is the basic unit of the café bridge movement. Circuit sizes are given in tables. Café bridge events are based on single circuits or multiple identical circuits of one of the types given below, distributed over the available restaurants in a regular or irregular fashion. Each circuit should have its own board colour.

One consequence of this is that certain numbers of tables work for café bridge, and certain numbers do not. For example, with 42 tables signed up, and entries slowing down, it will be necessary to run a waiting list until six more pairs register, since 45 tables works (9 circuits of length 5), but 44 and 43 tables do not. When planning event size it can be worth aiming for clusters of numbers which work such as 48,49,50 or 54,55,56.

The following numbers of tables can be run as complete five-, seven-, twelve- or eighteen-table circuits:

• 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30, 35, 36, 40, 42, 45, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65, 70, 72, 75, 77, 80, 84, 85, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 100

If the number of players does not divide evenly into the circuit size, the 'remainder' can be accommodated for any basic circuit pattern, by inflating one of the complete circuits according to a rover-like method described further down. The enlarged circuit needs a additional table with boards and equipment in each of its venues, although these tables will not be used in every round.

In deciding the circuit, it should be remembered that the more distant the venues, the fewer walks can fit into the schedule.

Odd-table Café Mitchells

Even-table Café Mitchells

Multiple opponents within venues

Arrow-switching

Distribution of circuits across venues

In the simplest case, all venues provide the event with the same number of tables, and the number of venues is the same as, or a multiple of, the circuit size. This allows the same roadbook to be given to corresponding pairs in different sections.

At larger events, different venues may not all provide the same number of tables. This increases the complexity of the movement cards as well as any other stationery. I provide a resource on this website for generating movement cards for arbitrary distributions of the circuits over venues.

Completely stationary pairs

Occasionally a pair will show interest, but for medical reasons they will be completely unable to move during the event. The solution is to give them their own table, separate from those used in any of the circuits. At registration or before, identify the pairs who will be playing against them at some point during the event, and modify those pairs' movement cards to redirect each of them to the stationary table during the appropriate round.

The stationary pair will need their own full set of boards. Two or more such pairs can be set up so that they share a set of boards.

Assigning circuits and starting positionss

In the simplest case, pair number assignment may be done randomly, or even in order of booking. However

• If phone scoring is used, all the N/S have to be willing phone scorers
• One of the circuits may be constructed to minimize walking for people who are slower
• Low-mobility players can be started at the registration venue if it is also a playing venue
• People may have dietary requirements that can be met by a particular lunch venue
• Players who have expressed a preference to start with or play against specific others
• It is desirable, although rather tricky, to even out the experience level of the players across sections, particularly with diverse ability levels.

Equipment and stationery

Each venue needs its boards, and for each table, four bidding boxes, four scorecards. Optional are pencils, any publicity flyers, table cards with the schedule of the pair numbers playing at that table, and cloths (which are discouraged due to their weight).

This can all go in a bag, e.g. a large Sainsbury's ‘bag for life’ can comfortably fit equipment for five tables.

Board colours should be used to distinguish multiple copies of the same board set and thereby prevent people playing the wrong opposition.

Equipment weight

Minimising equipment bulk and weight makes delivery and deployment easier in large events, and increases players' willingness to return the equipment at the end. Here are some approximate weights:

Stationery

The most essential pieces of stationery are:

• Movement cards individualized with each pair's schedule with round and lunch timings, which boards to play, where, and against whom
• Instructions + map not individualized, should have a contact phone number

Also optionally

• Travellers blank travellers for all the boards, or bespoke travellers with pair numbers and board colours pre-printed (I provide a resource for generating these)
• Table cards corresponding to the board sets, with round timings, and saying who should be N/S and E/W there in each round (see my resource)
• Vouchers
• for lunch or drinks - these can be integrated into the movement cards or instructions, or dispensed with altogether by arrangement with the restaurants.

Deployment

It only takes a couple of minutes to physically set out the equipment at a venue. However, it is normal for café managers to have a strong preference over where the bridge takes place, so there is no point in setting anything up until they have had a chance to indicate which tables should be used.

If multiple identical board sets from different circuits are in play in the same venue, consider putting them on non-neighbouring tables.

Since every table in the event is uniquely identified by the board set on it and the circuit which is is part of, there is no need for table numbers in café bridge.

Publicity - the right sort of publicity - is really important. Nothing beats word of mouth, but we usually design a bunch of A6 flyers using Vistaprint, about £23 for 1,000 including postage and VAT.

It is natural to want to publicise café bridge events through bridge clubs. However, bridge clubs lose table money on café bridge days, so there should be reciprocity - they should be offered reciprocal publicity at the Café Bridge, and where possible, the opportunity to hire equipment to the Café Bridge.

Counties are often happy to allow flyers to be left at blue- or green-pointed events provided there is no date conflict, but don't expect too many takers from these events.

Worthwhile places to advertise include

• Golf and tennis clubs which have bridge groups
• Community-based groups and U3A bridge groups
• Social bridge players you may happen to be involved with
• Public noticeboards i.e. libraries, post offices and supermarkets

Almost all the Café Bridge events in the UK have a component of raising money for a good cause, broadly construed. This fact helps the venues to justify reserving their tables and offering more economical deals to the event, and even contributing bridge and raffle prizes in the form of vouchers.

Often the beneficiary organisation will be chosen because of a personal relationship with one of the event organisers. Whatever the rationale, it is highly desirable for the feel-good factor of the event that the beneficiary charity should be an active, rather than a passive, role. It is reasonable to ask them to

• Use various means at their disposal to help publicising the event
• Send a charismatic representative to give a presentation at the prizegiving assembly

The Enlarged Circuit

Let us imagine a 28-table event which we wish to run as multiple 5-table circuits (five five-board rounds). We have five complete sections (A, B, C, D and E) and a remainder of three tables (X). Our aim will be to enlarge circuit E to accommodate the six 'X' pairs.

For each of the five tables in circuit E, we need a second 'X' table in the same venue; despite there only being six 'X' pairs, a full five extra physical tables are needed to accommodate them. Each 'X' table should be set up with the same-numbered boards as its corresponding 'E' table, but in a new colour.

Now to the movement. First we consider the first NS pair and EW pair from the remainder. The NS pair will be numbered X1, and the EW pair X11.

• In the first round, pair X1 plays against pair X11 at the table X1 (the 'X' table in the first venue of the 'E' circuit).
• In every subsequent round, both pair X1 and pair X11 will move together, up two venues along the 'E' circuit. In each round, pair X1 will play against the EW 'E' pair at the 'X' table, and pair X11 will play against the North-South 'E' pair at the 'E' table. Put another way, pair X11 displaces the East-West 'E' pair for that round - the displaced pair move to the 'X' table and play against pair X1.

We have now incorporated two of the six remainder pairs into the movement (see Grid 2 below).

Now we consider the next 'X' NS pair and EW pair, numbered X2 and X12 respectively. Again, they play each other in the first round, but this time they do so at table X2. Their subsequent movement is the same as X1/X11, together up two venues, with X12 displacing the EW 'E' pair and sending them to play against X2.

Similarly, the third 'X' NS pair and EW pair, numbered X3 and X13 respectively, start by playing each other at table X3, then move together up two venues each round, with X13 displacing, and X3 receiving the displaced.

The final movement can be seen in Grid 3.

This method works out-of-the-box for any odd-numbered circuit sizes.

For an even-numbered circuit size, the 'X' pairs must move up three tables, not two, at the half-way point. As with a skip move in an even-table Mitchell, this ensures that pair do not encounter the same board sets twice. For example, in a 12-table enlarged circuit, pairs X1 and X11 will play at the venues in the order 1-3-5-2-4-6.