ACBLmerge Report Features
1. Top Header
The top header contains several links. One of them allows you to save all the boards in Portable Bridge Notation (PBN) format, for use with Bridge Baron and the like.
2. Pair Recap Links
Clicking on a pair number will bring up a popup recap sheet for that pair. The board number, result, matchpoints, percent, and opponents are list for each board. Top boards (100%) are highlighted in solid green and bottom boards (0%) are highlighted in solid red. Lighter shades of green and red are used to indicate high boards (70% or higher) and low boards (30% or lower) respectively.
If the popup does not appear, you may have popups blocked in your web browser or have JavaScript disabled.
3. The Board
The board shows the board number, the board hands, the dealer, and vulnerability, just like a standard recap sheet. A dash indicates a void suit.
4. Results for each Pair
The raw score (e.g. 140), and the matchpoints (e.g. 16.00) are shown and sorted in descending number of matchpoints for N-S. This presentation makes it easier to see how often each result was achieved and where you stand on the board. N-S players want to be near the top and E-W players want to be near the bottom.
To find where you are on each board you may use the search facilty of your browser. Ctrl+F will bring up a search dialog in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Just type your last name and press Enter..
5. HCP total for each hand
Shows the high card point (HCP) for each hand, based on the standard A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1 point count system. No adjustments are made for length and/or shortness.
6. Double Dummy Makable Contracts
Shows all contracts that can be made if all players knew all four hands and bid and played perfectly. Since real bridge players do not see all the hands and therefore must bid and play based on the ensemble of hands consistent with the bidding and play up to that point, double dummy results must be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
The double dummy line of play may require dropping an offside singleton king, underleading an ace, eschewing a simple 50% finesse for a low probability squeeze requiring exactly the right lay of the cards, and other plays that work on the given board but which would not be the percentage bid or play.
On the ACBLmerge output, a result such as 4♠ means that the contract can be made regardless of direction. A result like 3/4♦ means North (or East) can make 3♦ and South (or West) can make 4♦. A dash, as in -/1♥ means only South (or West) can make anything in hearts. Smaller indications in light blue such ♠5, with the number after the denomination, show the number of tricks that can be taken. Thus, ♠5 means 2♠ would fail by three tricks.
NOTE: If after a bit of thought, you are not sure what lines of play the computer has run through to reach its double dummy conclusion, you can load the board into a double dummy analyzer which will allow you to see the double dummy result for any starting line of play. My favorite Windows program for this is Bridgify. It is free, has a clean, simple, intuitive interface, analyzes hands quickly, and can load hands from a PBN file. Conveniently, it is a standalone executable and therefore does not need to be installed. If you copy the executable bridgify.exe and help file bridgify.html on to a USB memory stick you can take it with you and run it from any Windows computer. The free Bridge Captain Double Dummy Solver is another alternative for Windows. Its interface is not as clean but it has the ability to compute the par contract and show how many IMPs were won or lost on each hand relative to the par contract.
7. Law of Total Tricks Calculation
The so-called Law of Total Tricks (LoTT), formulated by French bridge theoretician Jean-René Vernes in an article in The Bridge World in June, 1969 and popularized by Larry Cohen in his books, To Bid or Not to Bid (1992) and Following the Law (1994) is a theory that states:
“The number of tricks your side can take, if you play in your best trump suit, added to the number of tricks the opponents can take, if they play in their best trump suit, is approximately equal to the number of trumps held by both sides.”
The ACBLmerge report shows the number of total tricks, the number of total trump, and the difference between the two. If a side has more than one longest suit, the suit yielding the highest number of tricks is considered, the standard LoTT interpretation. If the LoTT were 100% accurate, the final number would always be zero.
8. Par Score and Contract(s)
The par score is the raw score for the contract beyond which neither side can bid further to improve the score for their side. The par score is shown from the perspective of N-S, i.e. it is negative if E-W are making a contract or N-S must sacrifice. There may be multiple par contracts which achieve the same score. For example, equivalently scoring contracts such as 4♥ and 4♠ will yield the same par score. Likewise 3N and 5♣/♦. However if the opponents can sacrifice profitably in say 4♠ but not 5♠, then only 5♣/♦ would be the par contract. All sacrifice contracts are doubled since that always improves the result for one side. As with makable contracts, there may be equivalently scoring sacrifices in more than one denomination.
The par score calculation is computed from the double dummy information above and therefore carries the same caveats..
9. Copy-and-Paste Aid
The copy-and-paste aid button will launch a pop-up window which presents the hands in various formats, ready to be copied and pasted as needed.
It is possible that the Copy-and-Paste Aid popup window will be blocked by a pop-up blocker. If this happens, you will need to edit your pop-up blocker settings or tell it to allow popups from lajollabridge.com or whatever website is hosting the ACBLmerge results.