Bridge Club News
Hans Van Weeren and I went to Canberra to represent NSW in the Australian Restricted Championships, along with us were Cassandra Mitchell and Clare Filmer-Ramsay ready to do battle for the glory of being Australia’s No 1 Restricted Pair. The Tournament format was Swiss Pairs, Imps, with 15 tables. The competition was fierce with pairs representing most Australian States and Territories being in attendance.
The venue was at the Canberra racetrack, but they didn’t have the air-conditioning up and running on the first morning and it was bitterly cold, perhaps giving the Canberrans a home advantage? Fortunately this was the only occasion, however we nearly succumbed to exposure. For our first match, a pair from NZ must have wondered what was happening as the woman to my right spent the entire session huddled inside her Parka, literally shivering.
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!
In July two novices earned masterpoint certificates demonstrating their continued learning and success. Amanda Trent, pictured playing in the relaxed red row received her 5MP certificate, while Barbara Ellis received her very first certificate for reaching 2MP.
Both Amanda and Barbara regularly attend the monthly improver lessons designed to help them continue their learning at Peninsula. These lessons take place in a supervised session time slot and are advertised on the website and thus also in the newsletter. They are open to all developers who are interested in improving their game. There are also sessions that have novice sections such as on Wednesday afternoon.
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!
The July 2017 ABF Newsletter contains a wealth of information and articles for the interested and competitive bridge player. My personal favourites were:
- Declarer play problems on page 20 - I managed one out of three...
- Counting challenge on page 27 - I did a little better here
- The Smile Sweetly After Disaster convention on page 29 - very useful for my partners...
And Cath Whiddon noticed some local news in the Newsletter - in the results of the Victor Muntz Restricted Swiss Pairs in Melbourne in June was "3rd Kelly Barber - David Owen (Peninsula/Waverley)". Congratulations Kelly!
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.
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.
The first session of the 2017 The Lawrence competition on Tuesday 27 June saw Clare Filmer-Ramsay and Cassandra Mitchell triumph and take home the first cash prize.
The Lawrence is a new competition being run on the fourth Tuesday night of each month until November (with the exception of August). It commemorates the significant contributions Verl and John Lawrence have made to the club, and was announced earlier this year when Verl announced her retirement as Chief Director.
It was also good to see some additional non-local players playing last night.
