Bridge Blog
It is good to see the new bridge year starting smoothly with both the lessons and regular duplicate sessions restarting well.
AGM
We held our AGM on Monday 13th October immediately following the regular duplicate session. It was a pleasure to have Belinda Stone and Linda Wareham elected to the committee. Belinda will be handling social events while Linda will be working on matches and competitions. We are really grateful to Libby and Buz, who stepped down from the committee, for their work over the past few years in handling similar activities and doing it so well on behalf of the section.
It was nice to be able to report positively to the AGM around different features of the section over the last year, including our robust financial position, the range of bridge activities we offer and our strong performance in different key events such as the Devonshire Cup, the Queens Centenary and some of the inter club and Surrey Team events.
The support of the Club’s administration was also noted gratefully in connection with catering and arrangements for the matches as well as their work in arranging our facilities during the refurbishment programme.
It was good to have a lively but constructive discussion around some of our different sessions. Clearly, we would like to attract more people to the Wednesday evening sessions, and we will aim to promote these more, possibly by having some occasional socials to precede sessions. The Wednesday game is very enjoyable and much appreciated by a number of regulars so it would be nice to have a few more tables to give it more of a ‘buzz’.
Another request that found support was for an additional daytime duplicate session. We are in fact planning to try out a gentle duplicate session to be run by Niall in place of one of his regular practice sessions. This will most likely be on Friday mornings on the first of the month starting in November. It should be a good opportunity for intermediate players to play in a gentle session and for less experienced players to develop duplicate bridge skills. As this will count as a regular session (rather than a teaching session) there will be no charge to Members (but the usual guest fee would apply).
We also plan to have a five-week revision course run by James on Monday mornings from 17th November to 15th November. These are aimed at people who have completed James’ beginners course, or who have some knowledge of the game already, and would like a more intensive ‘catch up’ teaching session. Another proposal that found strong support was to bring back the Thursday mentoring sessions which have proved popular in the past. We plan to revive this towards the end of the year when we have the capacity in place to organise them. It could then potentially generate some more playing partnerships for Thursday sessions.
