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July has been a month of celebration! We have been able to celebrate some wonderful member milestones, with Gino celebrating 50 years of membership and Joyce Low turning 90. Congratulations to other members who are having significant birthdays- please let Mary Farrell know ahead of time so we can organise an afternoon tea, as we all love our cake!
We have also had some success in the competitive arena, with our narrow win at the Sydney North Interclub Pairs Event held at Trumps. It was a very friendly event which always makes the day a success, regardless of the outcome.
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!
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bid or a call out of turn may be able to make a comparable bid (that is one that contains all the information of the withdrawn call) and thus avoid restrictions that might otherwise apply to his or her partner’s bids or leads.
In response to a member request we have started a service where members can ask bridge questions via an email to
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
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
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.
