The changes have been serialized in the Ruling the Game section of the Bridge Bulletin from July through November. Two of the ones that are easy to explain are:
- As of Jan 1, 2018 the stop card will no longer be in the bidding box at tournaments. ACBL has suggested we eliminate them at the club level as well. The opponent to the left of the bidder who makes a skip bid is still required to wait before he makes his bid.
- If no dealing machine is used, in dealing the cards manually, no two consecutive cards from the deck can be placed in the same hand. So deal them out one at a time in four consecutive piles as though you were dealing at the party bridge table. Since dealing five piles and combining the first and last piles puts the 5th card in the same hand as the 6th card, this also cannot be done.
More information coming soon.
The Laws of Duplicate Bridge
Effective Sept 25, 2017
Dealing 5 cards while sweeping back and forth does not violate the new dealing rule emphasized in point 2 of the post above. In such a deal the fifth and sixth card are not dealt to the same hand and further no two consecutive cards are dealt to the same hand.
Govind, these were copied from the article. If you have a question about Rule 2, go ahead and contact ACBL and let us know what is said. We only deal manually for team games, so we need to know. Thanks.