Although this May update is from the Western Cape Bridge Union (WCBU), much will also be of interest to bridge players elsewhere in the country. Further information on all the topics covered can be found on the WCBU website; just click on the links in this newsletter. Please also feel free to forward this to fellow bridge players, including beginners, who might be interested.
The last few months have seen clubs opening for face to face bridge though numbers are still way down from pre-Covid. Major exceptions here in the Cape were our first two Personal Trust Sunday Bridge and lunch sessions at the Bridge Centre in Green Point both of which were well attended. The next one takes place on 29th May (yes, that's tomorrow). The cost is just R 65 per person including lunch and a glass of wine. To enter contact Shirley Phillips (072 673 4248 or shirleyclarep@gmail.com). We look forward to seeing you there - as well as back at your clubs playing face to face - details of clubs can be found on the Clubs page of the WCBU website.
The big bridge event in June is the 2022 All African National Bridge Congress Teams taking place on RealBridge from 16th to 19th June, with the Congress Pairs taking place on BBO from 14th to 17th July; the Congress brochure is here. You can click here to enter these events on the SABF website. Also attached is a flyer which gives details of the June Personal Trust Teams competition which takes place each June Thursday evening on RealBridge with a R 1,000 prize on offer. Contact Mark Kenyon markkenyon25@gmail.com if you would like to enter.
The WCBU has reinstated the Friday competition on BBO and this is proving very popular, and not just with players in the Western Cape. The Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club, playing one online session a week and back playing face-to-face bridge three times a week, has introduced a fifth - gentle bridge - session on Thursdays at 13h30. This provides an opportunity for less experienced players in the Overberg who might feel overwhelmed playing competitive Duplicate Bridge. In attendance they have 'on hand' mentors who provide assistance to those who require it in either the bidding or the play of the hand. Enquiries can be made via their website: bridgewebs.com/hermanus or email: hermanusdbc@gmail.com
Players from the Western Cape dominated the leaderboards of the recent Petra Mansell and Heidi Atkinson memorial pairs competitions; congratulations to all of them! Let's see if they can make it three times lucky in this weekend's PE Mini Congress Pairs. Congratulations, too, to Andrew Cruise and partners who won the Impala Bridge Club's Ferguson Coelho face to face pairs competitions.
We have a number of bridge education events coming up, all of which are open to bridge players everywhere and not just in the Western Cape. Our next Personal Trust sponsored Zoom lecture hopes to feature Craig Gower discussing how experts think as they bid and play. We will publish a reminder with the date and Zoom link nearer the time - watch out for it!. If you missed Bernard Donde's fascinating lecture on Balancing you can find his slides here, as well as the slides from previous lectures.
The WCBU's May Warwick Wealth sponsored bidding competition attracted a lot of entrants vying for the R 250 prize; entries close at midnight next Tuesday. If you missed it, attached you will find the details of both the May and June competitions - please wait till the 1st of June before entering the June competition, entries for which will close at midnight on 30th June.
The WCBU has published Strategy for Matchpoint Pairs, a thought-provoking bridge book written by our regular international bridge playing visitors, Kathryn Herz and Eckhard Bohlke, and with a foreword by Tim Cope and sponsorship from Personal Trust. The cost is R75 plus postage. Please contact Mark Kenyon (markkenyon25@gmail.com) to order copies.
This newsletter would not be complete without some statistics. In the past two months the results from nearly 500 tables of bridge have been recorded in the Pianola database on the WCBU website. Since the beginning of January 2022, the WCBU website has been used by 2,987 visitors who read 23,531 pages of information during 9,677 visits. Of the visitors, who live in 43 different countries, 87.8% reside in South Africa, 3.3% in the United Kingdom, 3.3% in America and 0.9% in Australia; 50% live in Cape Town, 16% in Gauteng and 3% in Hermanus. As you would expect, the home page was the most popular page, followed by the results, JM Bridge, Bridge Clubs and SAWBA pages. Nearly 50% of visitors use a computer; 40% use a cell-phone; and 10% a tablet. And that's enough statistics for this month!