For the first time we had sufficient entries to have two fields at Peninsula Swiss Pairs congress on Sunday. There were 22 pairs in the Restricted section and 38 in the Open.Peninsula Players made up seven of the top ten places in the Restricted. Noelene Stewart and Kelly Barber were the winners. Peter Clarke and Hans van Weeren were second and Sarah Young and Gayle King were third.

Lesley Treasure and Yvonne Perkins were the best Peninsula Pair in the Open in 7th place. Lyn Smith and Jocelyn Bertram were 9th and Cassandra Mitchell and Clare Filmer-Ramsay 11th.

Thanks to the director Ronnie Ng and to Di Agostino who organised the excellent sandwiches and all those who contributed or helped in any way. Thanks also to Lois and Terry Rothwell who tidied up and prepared the room on Saturday and those who stayed at the end – Di Agostino, Sarah Young, Rob Scott, Bruce Kleem, Alan Davies, Greg Hay, Nerida Gillies and many others. Click here for results

 Terry and Lois Rothwell won the Swiss Pairs on Tuesday 18 July, holding off challenges from several other pairs.

The guest expert on this Challenge night was Richard Douglas who spoke on the topic of gaining and keeping a good partner. It was noticeable that there was far less bickering between partners for the rest of the night - may it last!

It is always a pleasure to celebrate our members' special days.

On Thursday 20 July, we will have an afternoon tea to celebrate Joyce Low's 90th birthday.

On Saturday 22 July, we will be celebrating Gino Morello's birthday and also congratulating him on the marvellous achievement of being a member for 50 years, 1967-2017, and a wonderful member across all those years.

Contributions to the afternoon teas would be appreciated.

Hope to see you there on both occasions!

Michael Draper did well today as one of the runners-up in North Shore Bridge Club's Swiss Pairs event. He played with Alex Kemeny.

You can check the full results for the North Shore Swiss Pairs Congress.

In an exciting finish, after Trumps had been announced as the winners after a tie checkback with Peninsula, a check of the category scores found an error which had given Trumps a half point too much. The corrected final result has Peninsula on 16 beating Trumps on 15.5 and North Shore Bridge Club on 14.5.

Unfortunately this correction was after nearly all the players had congratulated the Trumps players and departed - so over the next week we will need to create a collective photo of the winning team. And it was a team effort with seven of the twelve Peninsula pairs contributing points to the win.

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In response to a member request we have started a service where members can ask bridge questions via an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The questions and answers will be published on the Peninsula website, either under Bridge Education if the question and answer is more suitable for a beginner or novice player or under Members if they are more suited to open players of all levels.

Please give the service a go! You might not always agree with the answers but you may still learn something valuable.

And if you have reasonable bridge experience/knowledge, an open mind, a willingness to say when you don't know an answer, and empathy for and a desire to help other bridge players trying to improve their game - we would like to invite you to nominate for the panel that responds to such questions. If you are interested, then let me know at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

These are the six main changes, effective from 1 August 2017, that Peninsula club players should know about:

• Claiming - If a player claims he or she needs to face his or her cards at the same time as providing any information about an intended line of play. If doubt is expressed about the claim, and only if all four players agree, the hand can now be played on, otherwise the director needs to be called.
• Comparable calls – In some situations a player who makes an insufficient bid or a call out of turn may be able to make a comparable bid (that is one that contains all the information of the withdrawn call) and thus avoid restrictions that might otherwise apply to his or her partner’s bids or leads.

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There are lots of good news stories in the Peninsula Bridge Club just waiting to be written up for our website and monthly newsletter.

If you have a reasonable turn of phrase, can take a photo, use email and remember your school English grammar and spelling classes - and would like to join the Communications team - then please let me know at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..