[jillybean]

Stanza

AI Overview
In duplicate bridge, a "stanza" refers to a set of rounds played with the same board and opponents. It's a way to structure a duplicate bridge session, especially with a large number of tables, dividing the play into smaller, manageable portions. For example, a session might be divided into two stanzas, with players moving between tables within each stanza.

Could someone please explain the use and benefits of this?

[smerriman]

Everyone plays the first half of the boards, then you have a break for lunch where you can chat freely about the hands, before playing the second half.

[pescetom]

I'm puzzled about how this nonsense was even seeded: a group of lines in a poem has no possible coincidence with bridge and Italian bridge players would use 'sala' rather than 'stanza' to identify a room, whether physical or virtual.

[Edit: but was completely wrong about no possible coincidence, see rest of thread]

[smerriman]

pescetom, on 2025-July-26, 14:49, said:

I'm puzzled about how this nonsense was even seeded: a group of lines in a poem has no possible coincidence with bridge and Italian bridge players would use 'sala' rather than 'stanza' to identify a room, whether physical or virtual.

Stanza has a sporting definition (period / interval into which a sports event is divided).

Used in a bridge context on Wikipedia at least.

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2025-July-26, 15:15, said:

Stanza has a sporting definition (period / interval into which a sports event is divided).

Used in a bridge context on Wikipedia at least.

So you weren't kidding after all, it's a lunch break movement.
I never heard of this, mea culpa.
Unheard of over here, maybe a US thing.

[jillybean]

Do they actually use Stanza in US/ACBL ?

[mycroft]

I have a two-stanza movement for 3.5 tables. All it does is trade a 4-board sitout for 2 2-board ones, but it's an option. Boards 1-14 go out and are played, then taken off and 15-28 are put out and played.

There are (rare) movements that run in stanzas (I've never run them, but I've seen them). The intent is "all-play-all, where that requires more than a reasonable number of boards without a break". I think there are a few in Groner, and definitely some in Jannersten.

Some movements are "stanza-like", where there is a (director-performed) large change of boards, but not necessarily with a full replacement. The Double-Weave for instance; halfway through, the boards rotate halfway across the room. I have a 6-table team movement where the first 4 rounds are done with pre-duplicated boards, and for the last round, we take the boards off 4-6 and have 1-3 share their boards with the table 3 up (shuffle, unless you have 3 copies made of 31-35; which isn't hard to do if you *know* you're running a 5x5 by round 1).

But if you see "stanza" in a movement file description, it is a movement where, somewhere in the movement, a whole bunch of boards come off and a whole bunch of boards come in.

[jillybean]

So, Stanza is used in the USA for awkward movements, like your 3.5 tables.
Outside NA, they are used for events that include a break to allow for discussion of boards played.

[mycroft]

Well, maybe not. If you have a 15 table all-play-all 29 round movement, it might be best to not have any time for a break in 7 hours of Bridge (plus, having 60 boards in play simultaneously is - an issue). So you build the movement so that somewhere in there everyone has played the first 30 boards; then you pull them all and replace them, and everyone plays the next 30 boards for the rest of the movement.

If it's somewhere in the middle of the movement, maybe that's a good time to have a break for lunch, in a situation where people can discuss the hands because they've all played them :-).

Now there are other solutions to this - for instance, I would run 14 rounds of a 15 table Mitchell first session into the full integrated Howell second session. But it accomplishes the same thing. It's simply "another solution".(*)

Even for my 3.5 table Howell, after 14 boards is a "good time to take a break, have some cake, smoke/bathroom/whatever. You can talk about the boards if you want, too".

I mean, if I planned a "fun bridge afternoon" at my house, with 16 people, I'd probably run the 2-stanza Howell explicitly so that I can have a break after 14 to have food and chat. Sure I could do that with 2 14-board sessions, but then I have the "N and E get to open more often" problem we have in the online GNT (where, in 5-board RR matches, N opens twice as often as anyone else. If you play an aggressive system, it is a distinct advantage to have that pair play N-S, and the more "normal" pair play E-W, no?), plus I have to either borrow two sets of 1-14 or remake the boards rather than join in the fun at the break, rather than one set of 1-28.(**)

The difference may be that Europeans are used to shorter session lengths (and possibly 3 sessions per day to get to the same 50-ish boards we play in 2), so their preferred movements are written (and scored) with stanzas-within-one-movement rather than sessions-with-individual-movements. Or history. Or - I don't know.

(*) having set up the integrated Howell, and having had to be *very careful* about the crossover to make the "sitouts play each other" work, maybe the "two stanza full movement" is better anyway...
(**) both of those issues are a function of ACBLScor, which "can't handle" (without hand-hacking the movement file - I should ask TimH about that) not starting at board 1. Doing a two-stanza movement allows me to do it "right" within the confines of my scoring programs. Graph paper and travellers (and yes, I've done that before, too)? whatever :-).