Bridge Blog
I hope that you are all well. Today should have been our Summer Party, so I hope you will all have a glass of something to toast what should have been.
It is lovely to be able to be in the Club grounds and see, albeit at a distance, many of you. Everyone I have chatted to has been grateful for the online Bridge and thrilled that they can compete in the Duplicate sessions and still enjoy lessons. So once again I would like to thank Danny Gesua for all his hard work and for his patience, Paul Mendelson for his very entertaining lessons and Tim Chanter for running such great Beginner lessons online.
Following the recent bridge survey of the number of boards we should play in our Duplicate sessions we have decided to keep the number of Boards to 18 for Monday and Wednesday Duplicate and 12 for the Thursday session for the summer. If we are still playing online through the autumn and winter, we will review again. It might be that we will all be so proficient with the software by then that we will be happy to spend longer staring at the computer screen.
There have been a few complaints about the ‘Undo’ request. Our advice is still please accept ‘Undos’ as much as possible, especially during the bidding. However, I would stress that the Undo is there for a genuine mis-click, it is not meant to be used to correct a bid made in error, by miscounting your points or missing the shape of your hand. We cannot undo mis-bids at the table, so please only use the Undo button for a genuine mis-click.
Our inaugural Teams’ League finished last week with the winners of the two Box Leagues playing each other in a Grand Final this week. Good luck to Ralph Evers, Peter Bonnor Moris, Ron Wood and Philip Howard’s team and Richard Armstrong, Rita Gallinari, Sue Norgate and Kate Blake’s team.
The second Teams’ League starts this Friday. We have 9 teams entered. As it is an odd number, we are running one League where each team will play all the other teams over a 9 week period. Good luck to all the participants.
We are playing a friendly match against RAC Pall Mall next Tuesday online. If this goes well we will consider playing some of our other friendly matches online. I do hope that more of you will consider playing in these. There is much less waiting between hands in this format than in Duplicate.
For all our budding Junior players please see the invitation to a Junior Bridge Competition below:
Youth Bridge
Junior Online Bridge Competition run by Oxfordshire Bridge Association
14th June, 4 – 6pm
All levels of junior bidders welcome from anywhere in the UK – from novice to experienced
Please register with Joan Bennett – joanmbennet@hotmail.co.uk or Holly Kilpatrick – juniorbridgeoxford@gmail.com – with the following information:
1. A parent’s email address
2. Your BBO username
3. Date of birth
4. Your EBU number (if you are a member)
Cost: BBO$3
Any queries to Holly Kilpatrick – 07753 672001
And finally, some puzzles sent to me by Tim Warren of Surrey Bridge …
There are prize Double Dummy Puzzles printed in each Surrey newsletter – Surrey Bridge are concerned that not everyone sees them, and I have been asked to forward the puzzles directly to Roehampton Bridge Club members. You can find the puzzles on the Surrey website, and I have included them here
A hand is said to be played double dummy if everyone can choose the cards they play with full knowledge of all four hands. For instance, declarer need never lose a finesse to a singleton King offside, because it’s clear to all the Ace will drop the King.
These are the two puzzles sent from Tim Warren. If you would like to enter the competition please send your answers to TimjgWarren@gmail.com by Monday 15th June.
Thank you to everyone for their continued support.