Bridge Club News
It is not too early to get your team together for our major Peninsula Swiss Teams Congress on Sunday 28 April. This is a chance to play some of the state's best players at our convenient home.
The day is traditionally a popular success and furthersPeninsula's reputation for hosting such events, a testimony to the large number of volunteers who assisted in diverse ways.
Can we beat last year's 33 teams? You can check last year's details and photos from the day.
Led by Ron Klinger, 7 renowned bridge players will each contribute a column one day a week for the new ABF Daily Column, which started on 1 March.
As bridge columns are being cut from printed newspapers that are suffering reduced advertising, this option from the ABF provides an easy and convenient way to get your daily two minute bridge fix by email. I have received a week's worth so far, one from each of the seven experts, and recommend it for any competitive player. Based on the first week the standard is more accessible and probably a little easier than Ron Klinger's columns in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The cost is only $52 a year - find out all the details and subscribe on the ABF site.
Congratulations to Chris and Noreen Moore for winning our local final - and coming second in the state - in the 2018 NSWBA Under 100MP Championship in the 25-50MP division.
Congratulations to the other Peninsula local final winners in their categories: Maggie Gibbs and Paddy Purves (50-100MP), and Pam Crofts and Robin Hall (10-25MP).
Check the full results and growing collection of photos of the winners in the various categories. This event will be run again at Peninsula in 2019 on Friday 29 Nov.
Congratulations to Derek Tyms and Ado Hardy for winning the three week 2019 Club Pairs Championship held in February.
Derek and Ado had a great last round score of 67% to edge ahead of the previous leaders Alan Davies and Vivien Eldridge.
Derek and Ado are international members, and have since returned to Thailand and are likely to be back in another five or six months.
The World Bridge Federation says the world's number one bridge player has been suspended after failing a drug test.
Geir Helgemo, who is Norwegian but represents Monaco in bridge events, tested positive for banned substances at a World Bridge Series event in Orlando, Florida, last September.
After accepting he had breached anti-doping rules, Helgemo was suspended by the WBF until November 20. He also had all titles, medals and points from the 2018 World Bridge Series revoked.
Thirty or more Peninsula members travelled to the Gold Coast in February for the premier bridge event in the country. Great bridge and a great location for a social bridge getaway.
For those who have not been to one of these major congresses, you need to understand that there is a wide range of events from the tough open competitions to those restricted to much lower masterpoint ranges - something for everyone and a number of our novice players will have great stories to share.
I have tried to list our club members' successes over the various events - if I have missed one please let me know so I can add it in for the record.
Update - on Friday 12 Apr 2019 we had a new record 34.5 tables in play - see the photo. It would have been 35 tables but we had to send one of our five unpartnered players home when no fill-in player could be found.
Without any fanfare or expectation, the club broke its record number of tables in play for a standard session on Friday 1 February 2019 with 34 tables. This broke the previous record of 33.5 on a Wednesday in March 2018 and 33 on a Friday in February 2018.
This long story is relevant to the concept of enjoying the foibles of oldies playing bridge, rather than being irritated by the unusual nature of the overlap between club bridge and aged care.
Fifteen years ago I directed at a bridge club where Norma played. Norma found 28 husbands and relatives who wanted to learn bridge. Norma asked the legendary Sydneysider John Roberts to teach them. For this unusual group where about 20 had played social bridge and only 8 were relatively new to the game, John's method of teaching was that all the 7 tables simply played bridge (duplicate style, to some extent) with John attending to the 2 tables of newbies, with the other 20 players instructed to put their hand up and ask questions whenever they liked, learning bridge from John's answers.
