Following ABF negotiations with BBO, we are now able to host our own online bridge sessions for Peninsula members and their friends. Hosting these events will allow us to avoid the recent trial game incidents of members being blocked and strangers joining our games.
Our club hosted tournaments will also earn masterpoints, even if only 12 boards long.
To make this happen and to sustain the club there will be a table money cost payable on BBO, with this shared between BBO and Peninsula. BBO allows you to establish a credit balance of BB$ and use this for tournaments like ours. For a standard 18 board match the table money would be BB$2.50 (or slightly less than $4), cheaper than most club tournaments on BBO.
If you are looking for online bridge in the same format as a regular club session, with rounds with different opponents, then StepBridge is an excellent platform. I am happy to help any member get started on StepBridge - contact me on
If we can get a number of Peninsula players booking in to the same StepBridge session it might almost seem like a Peninsula game online.
Please welcome new member Pat O’Connor.
We currently have 610 members. 481 have PBC as their home club and the rest are alternates. Cassandra Mitchell and Robin Ho have done a lot of work to get people to renew and contacting and checking with non-renewing people. They have just sent to the ABF a list of 113 former members who have not renewed, to update their records. Only 24 of these were members last year.
Having just completed my first game in StepBridge I'm very impressed with how it compares to BBO.
Regular masterpoint tournaments are run 3-4 times a day - 1pm, 4pm, 8pm and sometimes 10am. A couple of times a month there are red masterpoint events. Each tournament has 3 board rounds, 8 rounds and 24 hands. All up it takes just under 2 1/2 hours.
On Sunday 8 March, Peninsula Bridge Club hosted the Margaret Smale North Metro Interclub Teams Challenge.
The event is named in honour of Margaret Smale, who played at bridge clubs across northern Sydney from the early 1990s. Margaret served on the Peninsula Bridge Club committee and as a director for many years. She was also one of the driving forces behind PBC acquiring a dedicated facility – the spacious, airy room which PBC bridge players are lucky enough to enjoy every day. An excellent bridge player herself, Margaret was always a very encouraging mentor to new and upcoming players.
Sunday’s event drew teams from Trumps, Manly Leagues Bridge Club, Balgowlah/Dee Why RSL Bridge Club, North Shore/East Lindfield Bridge Club and Peninsula Bridge Club. The day belonged to North Shore/East Lindfield Bridge Club who were the overall winners.
Your committee has been exploring what actions we all need to help keep us healthy and to minimise or prevent the spread of Novel coronavirus at our club.
We are guided by the advice from the NSW Department of Health and Australian Department of Health - both of these sites offer authoritative information which is updated as new information becomes available.
We had a very successful day on 2nd February with 104 attending at our Bushfire Victims Appeal event raising $2100 in table money. Most of these were our members with a sprinkling of visitors from other clubs. Many members who could not attend contributed generously to the raffle which raised an additional $2048. Red Masterpoints from ABF were free of charge. All funds will go to the Red Cross.
Most of the prizes were donated by local businesses. The first prize of a dinner/lunch for 2 at Bert’s, Newport Hotel with wines was won by Bryanna Whitaker. Sue Wilcox and Nolene Stewart won 2nd prize, $50.00 vouchers from Officeworks. Terry Herfort picked up the $30 voucher from Flower Power and Chris Moore will be enjoying the Magnum of Oakley Cabernet/Merlot donated by Porters Wines. Terry Herfort made 5 people happy with 5 vouchers for 2 ice creams. Trish Berry also donated a prize. Joan Butts provided 1 month free membership to the Joan Butts online school of bridge for 10 people as well.
Alan Davies has provided this interesting board from the Gold Coast Congress - the Ivy Dahler swiss pairs - that he and Vivien played and which was the top board.
They were sitting NS. The bidding went:
E 1D, S 2C, W pass, N pass (At the post mortem N acknowledged that they should have bid spades),
E X, S pass (sensing a trap), W pass (a trap!), N XX (we're in trouble, take it out)
E pass, S pass (nowhere to go!), W pass. Lead 9D.
