Contact

Member Login

Become a Member

Bridge Blog

It was very pleasing, and a bit of a relief, to see the first two of our 125th anniversary special events go off so well.

 

On Monday 20th April we held the new Rose Bowl Mixed Pairs Competition. There was a full Bridge Room with some newish and interesting pairings in evidence.

 

Congratulations to Daniel Cohen and Claire Martin for an outstanding win with a score of slightly over 67%. Runners up were Peter Hardyment and Kate Manners with Richard Ford and Verena Higgs closely behind them in third place.

 

On Wednesday 22nd April we held our special 125th Anniversary Duplicate Invitation Tournament. We had guests from eight of the clubs we regularly play matches against for lunch, and to play in the session. We had very positive feedback from our guests for our hospitality and the chance to join us for this event.

Steve ran the session with his usual efficiency and the arrangements for the bridge and reception went very well thanks to Belinda, with good support from the Club’s catering team.

 

Congratulations to Alan Lovell and Heather Dhondy from the AELTC on winning as NS and to our own Nigel Aspinall and Arnold Tunbridge for winning as EW. Good performances also by Roehampton Club pairs as runners up for both NS and EW (Peter Hardyment and Philip Howard and Ralph Evers and Ron Wood).

 

We are now looking forward to our final bridge 125th anniversary special event on Friday 19th June with Zia Mahmood, the celebrity bridge player. There will be bridge sessions with some prepared hands, a lunch and Zia will give us some anecdotes from his eventful career. It should be a great occasion and unsurprisingly it has been a sell-out.

 Social calendar

 

The summer bridge party is being held on 9th July and a poster with details of the event has been posted on the board. It should be another great occasion. The date was fixed to be a little later than usual in order not to clash with the Zia event. Click here for the poster

 

We have developed a shortish brochure outlining the activities of the bridge section. It is designed primarily for new Members but should also serve for existing Members who might be interested to play bridge and would like to understand more about our range of activities. Click here for the brochure

 

Club competitions

 

On 8th May we ran a special 125 and croquet and bridge competition. Congratulations to the winners Tim Russell and Peter Combe, who managed to come first in both activities. Croquet second place winners were Libby Dand and Sue Norgate while bridge second place winners were Sandra Fox and Wendy Gilbert. Many thanks are due to Ron Wood for organising this event once again.

Matches

We had a very enjoyable home match against Queens Club on 6th May. We were trailing modestly at the halfway stage, mainly due to their top pair bidding a good slam. We did however come back well in the second half to win by a solid 50 imps.

The home match against the Oxford and Cambridge Club on 12th May turned into a very close contest. Roehampton Club led by a single imp at the interval but finally ended up losing by the slender margin of 11 imps.

We did not do so well in our friendly match against MCC on 15th April which we lost by 42 imps. We do however field a wider range of players than some clubs who consistently only select their best players. While it is good practice not to be too competitive, we might in future want to think about fielding stronger teams against the clubs that seem to be playing more competitively against us.

Birthday drinks

 

It was very kind of Gordon and Sandra to invite us for drinks after the duplicate on Monday 11th May to celebrate Gordon’s 90th birthday. The birthday cake went down a treat along with the fizz. Many thanks Gordon and Sandra and looking forward to playing with you again soon (even if you are starting to win the Friday teams event).

 

Surrey EBU

 

Peter Hardyment and I represented Roehampton Club in the Mary Edwards Pairs competition on 26th April. We were pleased to finish in second place, which following our win last year has maintained Roehampton Club’s good record in this event.

 

Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair