Bridge Blog

Dear All,

As you will have heard, either from my email this morning  or from Marc’s header message, Paul Mendelson is moving away from London. He hopes to move by late spring / early summer which means he will no longer be able to be our Club Professional. 

I am sure that you will all join me in thanking Paul for his tremendous contribution to and support of the Bridge section over the years. I would not enjoy this wonderful game so much without Paul’s brilliant teaching, his patience, his wit and his enthusiasm. I will miss him deeply.

Paul has agreed to continue to be Roehampton Club’s online Professional, while we have need of one, which may be for longer than any of us has anticipated. 

This means that his online lessons and classes will continue through the summer, though there may need to be a break for his move. He will keep all his pupils informed of the times of all his sessions with his weekly emails.

Once the Bridge Room reopens, Paul has agreed to come back on a fairly regular basis to give us all seminars on tricky subjects. 

The Board has recognised the huge contribution Paul has made to Roehampton Club Bridge by voting unanimously to make Paul an Honorary Member which means that he will be able to represent Roehampton Club in many key fixtures and more importantly be in the Club so we can all keep in touch. 

We wish Paul all the best for the future.

Many congratulations to Ralph, Peter BM, Ron and Philip for winning the latest Teams League, which finished on 19th March.

The new League will start on 9th April. The start time will be 4.30pm to give more flexibility for Members to enjoy the tennis, golf, croquet and swimming pool that are now open. 

Danny currently has five teams signed up for the League. If you would like to enter a team please let Danny know as soon as possible at dannygesua2003@yahoo.co.uk 

 If you are a pair looking for teammates please also let Danny know, he may be able to pair you up. 

We ran a Teams Event on Real Bridge on 26th March, which was great fun. We had eight teams playing so everyone managed to play three boards against each Team. Congratulations to Simon Lucas, Corinna Evers, John Fooks and Nigel Brown for a great win. 

The Committee has decided to run these events monthly on a Friday, in line with what was offered by Nigel Aspinall back in the day. The next one will be held on 23rd April at 3pm. Please note that the session will run for up to two and a half hours. 

If you would like to enter a Team please let me know at kate11blake@btinternet.com

On 23rd March, Danny, Sally, Peter H and Ralph played in the SURDOC Swiss Teams bridge, representing Roehampton Club, on BBO. This is an annual teams of 4 competition, which is open to any team in the LBHCBA League or Knock-out.

Ralph reports: ‘There was a strong field of 16 teams with each team playing four boards against five other teams. We felt we played reasonably well and consistently for the most part, with one of our players performing with particular exuberance, and we were disappointed to finish in the bottom half. The event was well run and we enjoyed being able to participate.’

Following a request, I have managed to get the Real Bridge results linked to the Pianola system, which means that a results email will be sent out on Pianola after the Tuesday session, as was the case when we played in the Bridge Room. If this proves to be popular I will try and get the BBO results uploaded as well. This may be a bit more complicated … 

As we have now been playing for a ridiculously long time on the computer and everyone is very familiar with the technology we have decided no longer to allow automatic Undos on BBO. We will allow Undo requests for genuine bidding mistakes made as a result of a mis-click but only when the request is made before their partner’s bid at the latest.  We will not allow Undos during the play. 

I would remind you, if you do have problems with mis-clicking, that you can change your settings to ensure you double click to make a bid.

Any disagreements should be referred to the TD. 

This will only apply to sessions on BBO. On Real Bridge I am aware that people playing on iPads do have some issues with ‘fat fingers’ . As we can all see and hear our opponents I will leave it to you at the Table to decide whether you will allow the Undo request. It is normally quite obvious when someone is struggling with the technology.

I hope that many of you have made it to the Club this week. It has been a great joy to get back into the swimming pool and onto the golf course and to see so many people out and about.  

Happy Easter, 

Kate Blake | Bridge Chair