One of the many tasks going on behind the scenes of our club is the dealing of all the boards we use. Often this occurs on Sundays but you may have heard the dealing machine during some sessions when the volunteer dealers of the week do some necessary dealing to ensure we have boards to play. Even less conspicuous is the generally annual update of the playing cards - this took place during a dealer volunteer working bee on Sunday 4 Feb.
There was a terrific turnout of PBC dealers at the working bee on Sunday. Our dealing system has been upgraded to include bar codes on the boards, making it easier for dealers to immediately recognise if the board numbers do not correlate with the computerised deals. As well as adding the new bar code stickers to the boards, the dealers also went through all the old decks, sorting those that could be recycled to charities from those that needed to be thrown out. We then unpacked the new decks, so PBC members now have the privilege of playing with brand new cards - what a treat for us all!
Our Bridge Education Team did PBC proud today at our ABF Teacher CPD Day: from Anne opening up, Jen collecting registrations, Susan Jensen preparing all the materials in top quality and opening the session, Susan Falkingham running website demos, Vickie Busteed looking after book sales, Sandie Rooke collecting the feedbacks and Gayle King providing top class lunch - what a team showcasing our club!
Check the photo album (thanks Heidi Colenbrander!) from the Mix-Up Meet and Greet Social Saturday event held on 3 Feb. It was a great day created by many but particularly thanks to Catherine Whiddon, Susan Falkingham and Gayle King.
The key to the event was the allocation of players from across the spectrum to match those with less experience with those with more, both balancing the pairs and joining club players who might not otherwise have become acquainted.
Fifteen tables played with our new green Basic System Card - and fun was had! And wine and cheese at the end...
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.
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.
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.
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.
The winners of the 2017 Rosemary's Row year long competition on Mondays were Heidi Colenbrander and Ray Hurst.
This competition was restricted to those players with less than 150MP.
In 2018 the event is being reformed to play over four Mondays in July and will be restricted to less than 100MP (as at 1 Jun 2018) - the best three scores will count. Ray Hurst will be convener.
