Bridge Club News
The World Bridge Federation says the world's number one bridge player has been suspended after failing a drug test.
Geir Helgemo, who is Norwegian but represents Monaco in bridge events, tested positive for banned substances at a World Bridge Series event in Orlando, Florida, last September.
After accepting he had breached anti-doping rules, Helgemo was suspended by the WBF until November 20. He also had all titles, medals and points from the 2018 World Bridge Series revoked.
Thirty or more Peninsula members travelled to the Gold Coast in February for the premier bridge event in the country. Great bridge and a great location for a social bridge getaway.
For those who have not been to one of these major congresses, you need to understand that there is a wide range of events from the tough open competitions to those restricted to much lower masterpoint ranges - something for everyone and a number of our novice players will have great stories to share.
I have tried to list our club members' successes over the various events - if I have missed one please let me know so I can add it in for the record.
Update - on Friday 12 Apr 2019 we had a new record 34.5 tables in play - see the photo. It would have been 35 tables but we had to send one of our five unpartnered players home when no fill-in player could be found.
Without any fanfare or expectation, the club broke its record number of tables in play for a standard session on Friday 1 February 2019 with 34 tables. This broke the previous record of 33.5 on a Wednesday in March 2018 and 33 on a Friday in February 2018.
This long story is relevant to the concept of enjoying the foibles of oldies playing bridge, rather than being irritated by the unusual nature of the overlap between club bridge and aged care.
Fifteen years ago I directed at a bridge club where Norma played. Norma found 28 husbands and relatives who wanted to learn bridge. Norma asked the legendary Sydneysider John Roberts to teach them. For this unusual group where about 20 had played social bridge and only 8 were relatively new to the game, John's method of teaching was that all the 7 tables simply played bridge (duplicate style, to some extent) with John attending to the 2 tables of newbies, with the other 20 players instructed to put their hand up and ask questions whenever they liked, learning bridge from John's answers.
Once in a while you will go down
But it's all in the game.
Partner will give you a frown
And do exactly the same.
You both raise a big smile
When you win by a mile
And realise it's all in the game.
Anonymous - but adapted from the original lyrics by Carl Rigman
Around October 2018 Sandy Carter and I decided to move from the green to the red section to improve our bridge.
Initially this was quite daunting as many players have been in the red section for quite some time. We arrived early but still seemed to have to start a new table in the next row as everyone had “their” spot.
However, it turned out it really didn’t matter what time we got there as we always were able to find a table and play in the red section - so it was an unfounded fear.
A regular problem for Directors during play is the appearance of hands with 12 or 14 cards in them, while a less common problem is the switching of cards from the correct hand to another hand resulting in a fouled board (as happened recently).
Both problems often stem from the ritual some players have of spreading out their cards at the end of play for a session of ‘why didn’t you?’ or some similar post-mortem on the hand.
Might discouragement of the ritual of going through a hand after play be a suitable topic of a newsletter article (Ed. Yes - right here!) or an announcement prior to play? I know this will not eliminate the problem, but it might make those witnessing it at the table a bit more assertive about asking those engaging in it to desist.
The Rookies Individual Comp, first contested last year, held on the first Wednesday of each month between March and November, proved again to be a popular event. Over 80 players took part, 5 playing in all nine events and 20 achieving the qualifying level of seven of the nine and another 9 players completing six events.
Consistently strong performances by Susan Eason and Sandy Carter, playing together, including five results above 60% led to their achieving joint first place with Savitri Newman not too far behind. A little way back Detlef Volkmer led the pack with Terry Herfort, a late starter, in hot pursuit.
