Sun 15 Feb Day 36

High temp  28 / 82

We did the usual volley ball & basking in the sun morning, noon & afternoon.  I went out to try to get a newspaper TV guide as the TV Guide magazine only goes from 8 to 10 PM and cost almost $6.00.  As I was about to go into a Walgreens drug store a fellow outside was selling into subscriptions to the local paper, 8 weeks for $16.00. The Sunday paper alone is $2.00 and this way we have it every day so I went for it.  We probably will have to leave before the full 8 weeks but still seems like a good deal.  We worked on helping with prep for the St Patrick’s Day dinner; we cut out the printed tickets & clipped them together into table units. That’s what we were doing on the table outside.  Then we went out to the Sun night Bridge Swiss Pairs game.  This is the one with the weirdest scoring system.  The play itself is fine; you play 5 hands & then switch tables & you play 5 tables, Sheila was getting a little tired by the end of the evening.  Each deal is scored separately, you bid a vulnerable game you get your points, (i.e. 100 for 3 NT), plus 500, non vulnerable is 300.  You bid, for example, 2 spades you get 60 plus 50 points for a non game bid.   The vulnerability changes with the deal, i.e. 1^st & 2^nd deals nobody vulnerable, 3^rd & 4^th deals, the dealers vulnerable 5^th everyone vulnerable.  This part is fine. What is weird is the actual numbers you put up on the score pad.  You add up your total for 5 deals and then take the difference between your total & opponents total; you then take that figure, look on a table which will tell you a point split.  For example if the difference is between 150 & 300 then the winner gets 12 points & the loser gets 8 points.  This varies all the way from a zero diff to a large difference. The split always adds up to 20 so a zero to 50 difference nets each player 10 points where a large difference gets the winner 19 & the loser 1.  It seems to me to be unbelievably complicated.  Yet some people say that if we want to change the scoring, (which they have used for years & years), they will not play – dumb eh!  Sorry to go on so long but it cannot be explained any shorter & it may still not make sense.   There were 5 tables playing & we tied for 4^th place so split the pot of $2.00, so we got ½ our money back.  After we came back to the RV around 10 & turned in.