Latest News

Joan and John Castle won the Michael Marks Shield against a field of 17 tables, ahead of Joan Fawcett and Sue Riley and Anne Small and Hans van Weeren. See more photos on our Facebook Group.

The Shield event remembers the solid contribution made by past president, Michael Marks, who during his presidential period in the late 1990s, oversaw the building of our current dedicated annex on the Nelson Heather Centre and the 21 year lease from the Council. Event convener, Annegrete Kolding, asked long term member, Sue Riley, to provide some background information. Interestingly John Castle was president at the time we first moved from the Mona Vale Golf Club to the Angophora Room in the Nelson Heather Centre.

Today's large field with a single winner tested our directors, Alan Davies and Cassandra Mitchell, as they were both running a Web Mitchell movement for the first time, complicated by adding in an Arrow Switch.

Anne Small received her well earned ABF Teacher's accreditation certificate on Thursday 5 April, with congratulations from President Sarah Young.

Anne is the fifth member to receive this teaching accreditation from the ABF and this is particularly well-timed for our Bridge Education team given Sue Falkingham's departure to Tasmania.

Following the Advanced 2/1 Workshop on Saturday 14 April, Anne will be the Bridge Education team's reference point for this increasingly popular system. See her ABF Teacher profile.

The committee and key representatives of our sub-committees met in the second half of January to think out loud about the future of the Club and identify decisions that needed to be made and issues that needed to be managed. Read our strategy meeting summary.

There were three key questions:

• Why are we here as a club?
• Where do we want to be in five years?
• What do we need to manage well to get there?

The Tuesday session on 3 April stopped to wish Heather Roseby a happy 90th birthday!

The cake was lovely and accompanied by some spectacular fragrant flowers.

And the 14 table bridge game was as competitive as always!

Peninsula travelled to the 2018 Central Coast Super Congress on 23-25 March. And we had some success, notably Marieta Borthwick and Annegrete Kolding were runners-up in the Restricted Swiss Pairs.

Other results to mention include Marieta and Annegrete teaming up with Heidi Colenbrander and Ray Hurst to come 8th equal in the Restricted Teams, and Carolyn Dowling, Chris Duggin, Lori Neville and Yvonne Perkins coming 15th in the Open Teams. Congratulations to those members.

Hopefully a photo is to come.

One player comment recently lamented the decline in numbers at our Thursday afternoon session. Another lamented how full the Wednesday session was becoming. 

Overall our table numbers are growing. There is considerable variability across the year making comparisons difficult but our overall weekly number of tables being played (excluding our supervised sessions) seems to be about 30-40 tables higher than two years ago. The Wednesday and Friday sessions have shown the most growth, with numbers now often touching or just over thirty tables in play.

We currently have thirty-five permanent tables and are working on bringing this up to thirty-seven in the near future, seeing this as the room's capacity while still retaining our social area near the kitchen. We are also planning to buy additional chairs and side-tables to match these table numbers.

The Australian Bridge Federation calculates and publishes the club's best improvers (in terms of the most masterpoints gained) for each masterpoint ranking. Click the link for the full details of these McCutcheon rankings.

For the two months to end February Peninsula's highest masterpoint earner was Hans van Weeren on 55.28 just ahead of Peter Clarke on 52.26 and Alexander Cook on 35.46. 

Congratulations to these three and also to our leaders in each masterpoint category, who are as follows:

Read

The Australian Bridge Federation calculates and publishes the club's best improvers (in terms of the most masterpoints gained) for each masterpoint ranking. Click the link for the up-to-date full details of these McCutcheon rankings for our members.

For the three months to end March Peninsula's highest masterpoint earner was Robin Ho on 35.04 ahead of Alexander Cook on 34.2 and Vivien Eldridge on 33.94. 

Congratulations to these three and also to our leaders in each masterpoint category, who are as follows:

Read