Bridge Club News

Trish Giles has won the 2017 Stebbins competition, ahead of runner-up Anne Small. It was a four week event that saw many players humbled but not Trish and Anne, nor Annegrete Kolding who won the <100MP category.

Board 16 in the final session was notable - with game contracts in both directions. In fact 12 tricks made in Hearts by North five times (including one doubled and one redoubled), while eleven tricks were made in Spades by West at all the other eight tables! 

Check the full results.

On Thursday, Sarah Young presented cheques for $4,500 each to Eileen from Mona Vale Hospital Auxiliary and Ken from the Rural Fire Service. They were very pleased indeed.

Ken let us all know about the great work the RFS does, in particular that if you live in a bushfire prone area and are no longer able to prepare your property for the bushfire season, the RFS can come and help at no cost.

Eileen told us all about the changes that will be happening at Mona Vale Hospital when the new hospital opens.

Congratulations to Sue Riley who is the driving force behind the fund-raising and thanks to all our members for their generous contributions throughout the year.

Vona lost her life this October after an almost 18 month battle with cancer. Till the end one of her passions was bridge. She and Alan joined Peninsula Bridge Club in 2000 and Vona last played on 3 August this year.

Her funeral was low key, family focused and attended by a large contingent of her bridge family.

Vona loved to represent the club in congresses and interclub events. She was a very good player with 830+ masterpoints and relished the challenge of playing difficult to make contracts. She was also an enthusiastic doubler always saying to the opposition: “I think I’ll give you a kiss”.

Over the years as well as representing the club Vona was a dealer, and was involved in aspects of catering and mentoring younger players.

Farewell Vona you will be missed.

This is one of Peninsula’s prestige events so find a team and sign up at the club. This held over three weeks starting on Thursday 9 November and will be directed by Ronnie Ng.

Check the event for full details and how to enter.

The strategy for Swiss teams is different to the normal matchpoint pairs we play at most of Peninsula's sessions. This is a good article about the different tactics.

This is one of Peninsula’s prestige events so find a team and sign up at the club. This red point event is held over three weeks starting on Thursday 8 November and will be directed by Brian Soutter.

Check the event for full details and how to enter.

The strategy for Swiss teams is different to the normal matchpoint pairs we play at most of Peninsula's sessions. This is a good article about the different tactics.

Maggie Gibbs and Susan Jensen won the three week Under 100MP Championship Pairs after an excellent third week result. They ended one point head of runners-up Sue Evershed and John Simmonds. The competition proceeded without issue with eighteen pairs and another set of players are now comfortable with arrow-switching (used to fairly calculate results over the combined north-south and east-west fields). Check the results (including cumulative results) on our website.

There was also an additional two prizes for the best remaining pairs with each player below 50MP and below 15MP. Provisionally these are Alan Jones and Peter Wilson for the under 50MP (and coming third overall) and Donette Taylor and Patsy Wilson for the under 15MP prize.

"Joan Butts, in her inimitable style of enthusiasm, engagement and bridge wisdom, delivered an excellent two hour workshop on "Doubles" at Peninsula Bridge Club on Tuesday afternoon, 17 October 2017 to an audience of 67.

Once Joan gauged the standard of her audience - which were mainly novices and intermediate players - she pitched her presentation solely to takeout doubles.

In my observation of playing bridge over the last eighteen months, the takeout double is underutilized. Joan confirmed this and explained that a takeout double is a very valuable bid to have in your armory, especially when your pesky opposition open the bidding and you have an opening hand with shortage in their suit.

Read

Great news! Peter Clarke and Hans van Weeren were successful winning the  two-day Two Men and a Truck Restricted Teams at the 2017 Sydney Spring Nationals event. And Marieta Borthwick, Heidi Colenbrander, Ray Hirst and Annegrete Kolding won the Novice Teams, playing in the same field. Check the full results.

Peter and Hans' team won convincingly with a VP tally of 88.61, 14VPs ahead of the closely contested minor places. They earned more than 10MP, suggesting their time in the Restricted category may not continue forever... The only team to beat them was the Borthwick-Colenbrander-Hirst-Kolding team!