Monday 3rd April 1.30pm
This is an annual team of four competition for the Roehampton Club Trophy. Please sign up in teams on the bridge noticeboard in Reception. All welcome!
There are many opportunities to improve your bridge through lessons at Roehampton both online and in the traditional manner of bridge room classes.
Tim Chanter’s Monday and Tuesday evening classes are well established, very popular and usually oversubscribed. He has now published his summer term syllabus for both intermediate level and refresher classes beginning 17th April. You can sign up for the classes at Reception. Click here for the syllabus
Any queries, please contact Tim at tim@105.org.uk
We have also recently arranged with Richmond bridge teacher Nial Igoe to come and deliver two trial Wednesday morning classes at Roehampton on 12th and 19th April, 10am-12pm. The idea of the trial sessions is to gauge interest in regular Wednesday morning classes and to find out what sort of topics you would like to cover. The cost to attend each of the trial sessions is £7. If you would like to attend either or both the trial sessions, please would you let me know so I can add your name to the list at julie@juliebacon.plus.com
Paul Mendelson continues to offer his Wednesday morning (Intermediate) and Thursday morning (Advanced) classes online. If you would like to be added to his circulation list to receive information about these classes, please contact Paul at pm@aceoftrumps.com
Paul is also hoping to come and deliver some Friday and Wednesday classes at Roehampton Club in July.
I was reminded about the very useful function on BBO www.bridgebase.com which allows you to practice your declarer play. Navigate to ‘Practice’ and then ‘Bridgemaster’ after logging in. The bidding is given, and the opening lead made. You then play the hand. The software is designed so that you will fail if you take the wrong line of play. Luckily you can try as many times as you like, and a solution is given.
Obviously, the Roehampton Club team who won the Devonshire Cup are not in need of any Bridge tuition, having won this very prestigious trophy for the 4th year consecutive year, (excluding 2020 when it wasn’t played). Congratulations to the Roehampton Club Red team.
Malcolm reports …
‘It is very pleasing to be able to report that the Roehampton Club Red team consisting of Peter Bonnor Moris, Malcolm Bricknell, Ralph Evers and Philip Howard won the Devonshire Cup final on 14th March, thereby retaining the trophy. Roehampton Club had beaten teams from Hurlingham, RAC and Athenaeum on its way to meeting RAC Spitfire in the final.
On paper, Roehampton were a far stronger team. However, it did not turn out to be a one-sided contest. At the end of fourteen boards (the halfway point) the scores were exactly level – unprecedented in the competition and making for a good match. In the second half a combination of good defence by one Roehampton Club pair and good declarer play by another saw us move into a commanding lead, eventually finishing at plus 1490 points – although of course this was not obvious to any of us until the very end.
The Devonshire Cup has some relatively quirky requirements around the conventions that are allowed. This is based on its traditions and the desire to keep more complex systems and conventions out of the competition. So, for example, transfers are not allowed. This creates challenges in the bidding and resulted in a big swing on the below hand.
A10765
AQ9
Q6
Q105
83 9
1085 KJ64
A93 J10875
97643 A82
KQJ42
732
K42
KJ
At one table the RAC South opened 1NT team and his partner, unable to transfer, duly bid 3NT. This went one down helped by a good opening lead of a small Heart from Philip. At the other table, Peter and Ralph played in four Spades which made comfortably after declarer was able to pitch a losing heart on a club. All in all, a very satisfactory result as even the Spitfire team seemed reasonably happy to have given us a good contest having done well to reach the final in the first place.’
Next team Practice – Friday 21st April 1.30pm. There is a sign-up sheet on the board in Reception.
During week beginning Monday 17th April we will play our duplicate session as part of a Sims Fundraising Event, (simultaneous pairs). A Sims event is one where the same hands are played at Bridge clubs across the country which means that in addition to your club score your results will also be scored against all the other clubs taking part. Complete results are usually posted the day after the event. Table money will be as normal – £4 – and this will be donated to the fund along with any additional voluntary donations by those taking part.
As many of you know, we have an annual internal golf/bridge day, which is a lot of fun and very popular in addition to golf/bridge matches played against other clubs. This year we have decided to also hold an internal tennis/bridge day which we hope will prove just as popular. I give the dates below of all our planned joint bridge/ games events so that you can make a note in your diary now. I hope you will join in with these events and sign up when the notices go up on the notice boards in due course.
9th June- Internal Croquet/Bridge
6th July- Match Golf/Bridge (Wimbledon Common Ladies) Home
7th July- Match- Croquet/Bridge (Hurlingham) Home
14th July- Internal Tennis/Bridge
25th July- Match Tennis/Bridge (Hurlingham) Home
4th August- Internal Golf/Bridge
15th August Match Golf/Bridge (MCC) Home
22th September- Match Golf/Bridge (Royal Mid- Surrey) Away
A reminder of our link to Bridgewebs with the full years calendar – bit.ly/rcbridgewebs
Or you can access from the internal pages of the Roehampton Website under the Bridge Tab.
