It's Your Bid

The Matchpointer has periodically held a bidding contest since the late 1960s called "It's Your Bid." Usually there are four bidding problems and an opening lead problem.  The scoring system for the contest weights each Flight A responses as ten points (six for non-locals), Flight B as three (two for non-locals), and Flight C as one (local or not).  We downgrade non-locals because we have no way of telling when someone from outside the area tries to enter a higher flight, and the percentage of online entries in Flight A (like the percentage of self-rated 'experts' in online bridge) is suspiciously high.
If you hit the response with the most points, you score 100 for that question.  If not, your score is based on how many points your response got compared to the best response.
Why score by popularity (weighted slightly by flighting)? Because it is objective! In other bidding contests, a judge is hired to collect the votes and decide which answers get how many points.  The judge does so partly by popularity, partly by the comments, perhaps a little by the actual result at the table, and sometimes by the responses of those whose opinions he respects.
We think it’s better to limit the judge's role to ensuring that the flights are correct and let the formula decide the results.  Sometimes this will go against the table result, but we all know that what is right in theory may not always work in practice! Your mileage may vary.
It’s Your Bid will—eventually—continue this feature in the online Matchpointer (the print version may contain a report on the winners, but the length and number of comments may be edited even more than they are here).

However, with the web page focussed on provinding basic bridge data for the next while, the online version of It’s Your Bid will be a while yet.  In the meantime, we suggest you check out the Vancouver Bridge Centre's Bidding Contest, which mirrors the monthly contest in the ACBL Bulletin.