Latest News

NEW Advanced/intermediate Saturday workshops - our first Advanced/intermediate monthly workshop on using the Jacoby 2NT Convention as a response to Partner's Major Opening (instead of a Limit Raise) is on Sat 10 Feb 9.30-11.30am.

This workshop is for keen players who want to add to their established bidding system.

The focus of this lesson is the Jacoby 2NT convention. Players should be familiar with: five-card major-suit opening bids and responses; valuing responder’s hand using dummy points (SP); making a single raise, a limit raise, a forcing raise and a pre-emptive raise using natural methods. We will look at responder’s hand type for the Jacoby 2NT.

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Our first Swiss Pairs for 2018 on 30 January was a great success and saw Nerida Gillies and Hans van Weeren triumph (with a box of Swiss chocolates) ahead of Peter Clarke and Jim Rothwell. The turn-out was excellent with 22 pairs playing 4 rounds of 6 boards.

Normally the Swiss Pairs, convened by Annegrete Kolding, will be timed for the fourth Tuesday evening on each month with the next on 27 February (but check the event calendar for exceptions). As an innovation for 2018 we trialed seeding for the first round of the four round event. In future to save time we will probably make this more self-seeding when our pre-session expert presenter is also using the director's computer.

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As I write this to you, our President is flying to the United Kingdom on family business following the death of her mother at the end of December. I am sure we all wish her well.

It is with sadness that I also note the passing of long term member, Barbara Austin. She was a Gold member with 30 years as a member. She last played at the club on 30 November last year, where she scored close to 60%.

We are now in the full swing of 2018 with all of our sessions back in action. Some of our members have had fantastic holidays, some have already done well in the ABF Summer Festival in Canberra, and some are planning to do so at the Gold Coast in February. Our 2018 learning program for members of all types and levels is also now underway and I hope you avail yourselves of some of the learning options. We are also soon starting our beginners classes for new players - please invite your friends and family members so that they might enjoy the social mind game of bridge.

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We are revising the club's constitution to ensure it is still appropriate for our association. We would expect to bring it to a special general meeting of the club in the first half of this year after which, if it is accepted by members, it will need to be ratified by the NSW Department of Fair Trading.

Any member who is keen to review the revised constitution and contribute to this process before the special general meeting is invited to contact David Farmer by email on austega@gmail.com or phone on 0415 715 743.

When last year's committee decided to include a Concession renewal category it was intended to be for only those on Full Commonwealth Pensions and it was anticipated that the take up would be modest. The inability to simply discriminate between Full and Part Commonwealth Pension entitlements has been one factor in a much larger than expected take up of this Concession.

At the same time our preliminary discussions with the Northern Beaches Council have suggested that we will need to contribute financially in order to secure a lease on any adequate premises when our current lease expires in three years. This puts additional priority to building up our retained surpluses.

As a consequence of both these factors, the Committee decided on 22 January to withdraw the Concession membership category immediately for new members and from 31 January for renewing members. We trust members will appreciate our reconsideration of this decision, which was not taken lightly.

Peninsula had great success at the ABF Summer Festival of Bridge in the Novice category.

In particular Marieta Borthwick and Annegrete Kolding had two great triumphs:

• They partnered with South Coast pair Louise and Michael Brassil to win the Novice Teams event, and 
• They were runners-up in the Novice Swiss Pairs.

Heidi Colenbrander, Susan Jensen, Ray Hurst and Sandie Rooke also had a great event, being runners-up in the Novice Teams event.

Our open players had some success at the ABF Summer Festival in Canberra.

David Farmer and Cath Whiddon were runners-up in the one-day open Penline Swiss Pairs.

They followed this with eighth place in the two-day Chris Diment Matchpoint Swiss Pairs event. (Performance in their other event was not so newsworthy...)

Many of our volunteers need a way of transferring files to the club's computers for printing or storage at the club. Here are the easiest ways to do this:

1. Use a USB Flash Drive - Do a virus scan, copy the files to the USB flash drive, take it to the club, insert it in a computer there, and copy or print the file from the USB flash drive.
2. Email the file to yourself - Then when you go to the club, access your own email via a browser on a club computer and copy or print the file. You will need your email address and password to access your email at the club computer and check that you are NOT storing your password on that computer.
3. Use a shared Peninsula Bridge Club Google Drive folder - If you also want to store files for use by others, then this is probably a good long term approach. It will allow you to permanently store the relevant files in a folder that others, and you from a club computer, can access. Contact David Farmer for instructions and the login details.