Bridge Blog

I do hope that you are all well and finding things to do to fill your time. We owe Danny Gesua a huge ‘thank you’ for all his efforts in getting our Duplicate sessions online and sorting out any problems cropping up. The sessions are proving very popular, we had 15 full tables this Monday.

Just a couple of reminders:

Please ensure that you are logged in and registered for the session by 1.15pm. This really helps with the organisation of the session.

Again, it is easier for us to manage if you can sign in in pairs. One option, if you have not got a partner for a particular session, is to use the partner finder on Pianola. If this can be done in advance it means you can register as a pair.  However, if you do not have a partner to play with in a session then there is still the option of the partnership desk.

And a request:

The Duplicate sessions cannot run with a half table. To ensure that this does not happen Danny has a standby pair ready to be slotted in every session. He would be very grateful for more volunteer pairs to be on standby. You do have a fairly good chance of playing, but obviously it is not guaranteed. If we have a good pool of willing volunteers, you will only be asked to be on standby infrequently. Please contact Danny on dannygesua2003@yahoo.co.uk if you are able to help.

We have had to change the times of the Wednesday session again as BBO are now not allowing any Duplicate sessions to be played between 4pm and 9pm. There was insufficient interest in changing the evening session to a weekend, so our weekly sessions are:

Monday at 1.30pm
Wednesday at 1.30pm
Thursday at 1.30pm.  This is a session aimed at less experienced players where we are playing only 12 Boards, with slightly more time per Board.

I think most people have adjusted to playing online and though it is does feel quite different at least we are still able to play bridge. Please do give it a go if you have not already.

You must register with BBO and send either Danny or me your BBO Username before you can enter a Roehampton Club session. Once in, the process of bidding and playing is quite straightforward, the decisions you make, however, are as tricky as ever!

As you may be aware, Danny sent out an email about the possibility of setting up a Bridge Teams competition. It is not possible to run this as one session, as we do in the Bridge Room once a month, but we can do it as a Box League or Round Robin, where each team plays against all of the other teams, but in individual matches.

From the responses Danny has received so far, we probably have enough interest for six teams, so we are happy to go ahead and try and set this up. Each team would play one match each week on a Friday afternoon at 1.30pm.  Each match is likely to be 8 to 12 Boards. (The actual number of boards is to be confirmed).

If you would like to take part, could you please email Danny your team of four at dannygesua2003@yahoo.co.uk.

I have been sent the results for the Surrey Lawn Tennis Bridge Section League as they were before we went into lockdown. It is not possible to conclusively predict the winners from the results so far as there are still several matches outstanding, but Roehampton Club are currently lying second, 1 VP behind the leaders and 2 VPs ahead of third.

Many congratulations to the squad of Val Lanceley, Caroline Jenkins, Sue Norgate, Verena Higgs, Rita Gallinari and Kate Blake.