ACBL’s new convention card was introduced over a year ago, in the March 2022 Bridge Bulletin.
It’s actually much better than the previous one and takes into account the recent changes in alert and announcement procedures.
However, most of us, myself included, haven’t started using it yet.
Why is that? I can think of a couple of reasons:
- At our age, we’re set in our ways and change is hard.
- Clubs and tournaments haven’t exactly been promoting its use, in fact they still have a large stock of the old ones to get rid of.
So why adopt it?
- You’ll need to do it eventually. ACBL is aware that it could take several months for the existing cards in circulation to be replaced with the new one and has stated that “During the transition, either card will be acceptable.” No word yet on when the transition period will end.
- It will be a good opportunity to go over your conventions with your favourite partners, and review the new alert/announcement procedures. (e.g. transfers should now be announced by naming the suit transferred to – for instance, after 1NT, 2D, opener should say “Hearts”, no less, no more).
If you can’t easily find a paper copy, just download it from ACBL and print it.
To help you understand the new CC, ACBL published a series of explanatory articles in the BB over the last year. Local player Esther Wiebe has taken it upon herself to collate all of them within the pdf document below (which you can read and also download by clicking on 
) in the title bar, below.
ACBL_ConventionCard_NEW-Wisdom-220311