Young Chelsea Bridge Club

Point-a-Board Teams

Our next Point-a-Board teams will be on Thursday May 5th - so it's time to organise your team now! However, if you have trouble getting a team together, do come as a pair (or even a single player) and we'll make you up in to a team with others.

If you're interested in reading more about point-a-board (called Board-a-Match in North America), there is an article by Michael Rosenberg, and another by Steve Weinstein to whet your appetite.

New Teams Events

Respondents in our recent members' survey asked for more teams events, and more weekend events, and with this in mind we ran a new one-day event on Sunday 3rd April - a mini-knockout teams.

Although only six teams took part, it was very well received and we will certainly run another one later in the year. Congratulations to the winning team - Carrie Eden, Mike Eden, Helen Wildsmith & Tim Chanter.

Same Name Pairs

There were five Thursdays in March, so we used the extra one (March 24th) to hold a "Same Name Pairs". Gitte Hecht-Johansen and Oliver Johnson were the highest ranked pair whose names were deemed to close enough to qualify. Well done to them, and nice to see Oliver back at the club. Congratulations also to Carla & Carla, Lorna & Lorna, Liz & Liz, and Chris & Chris for finding appropriate partners.

Monday Evening Expert Commentary

Since January 17th, we have an expert commentator leading a discussion after the Monday evening duplicate each week. There is no extra charge for this, and all players are welcome to stay behind after the game.

The most recent one was led by Ian Payn, and committee member Rosie White, who has organised the programme, has written up one of the hands discussed by him. We also have an earlier hand from Espen Erichsen's evening and one of Dafydd Jones's. Future discussions will be led by Brian Callaghan (Feb 14th), Nicola Smith (Feb 21st), Richard Bowdery (Feb 28th) and Heather Dhondy (Mar 7th).

EBU Board Member

Congratulations to former Chairman of the YC Management Committee, Ian Payn who has just joined the board of the English Bridge Union.

Camrose Winners

Congratulations to father & son pair Gary Jones and Dafydd Jones (who was one of our recent experts providing after-game commentary on a Monday night) - Wales has just won the Camrose Trophy for the first time ever, with them in the team! Earlier last year they were in the team that won the Spring Fours, so they are clearly going from strength to strength.

Portland Pairs Winners

We had a record turnout for our heat of the EBU's Portland Pairs (mixed pairs championship), which was won by Chris Duckworth and Brian Callaghan over the whole country . Congratulations to them, and well done also to Anouk Riviere who is one of our newest members, and who came second over all playing in another heat.

Oscar wins!

Congatulations to Oscar Selby, at eight years old our youngest member, who achieved his first win in a duplicate, playing with his father Matthew on Tuesday night.

Third Thursday Pairs League

Congatulations to those who won their divisions in the second season of our popular new pairs league, which ended on March 17th. The first division was won by Brian Ransley & Pete Nichols (Ian Payn, Rob Cliffe Jeremy Dhondy & Brian Callaghan actually had a higher score but were playing without standing when they had to bring in a fourth player because of Ian's recent bereavement). The second division was won by Eryk Gozdowski and Tony Mutukisna, and the third division by Graham Pollack and Paul Chapman. Well done to all of them - the winning pair, and possibly the runners-up, will be promoted for the next season.

The next season will start on April 21st and entries are invited now. Further details can be found here.

BSC minutes

The minutes of the most recent meeting of the Bridge Sub-Committee, held on 3rd Feb 2011, are now available to download.

Peggy Bayer Winners

Congratulations to Toby Nonnenmacher and Michael Alishaw who were in the winning EBU team for the Peggy Bayer Trophy, the under-20s home international event.

Master Points Winners

The EBU has just published their Annual Master Points Reports and long-term club member David Bakhshi heads the Gold Point ranking again. In the Club Champions list Ryan Stephenson earned the greatest number of master points at the Young Chelsea, closely followed by Alan Woo and then Olivia Woo. Well done to all of them.

Bridge England Simultaneous Pairs

We had seventeen tables at our heat of the Bridge England Simultaneous Pairs, raising money for our International teams, on 8th February. Liz Wright and Lorna Vestey scored over 70% both in the club and nationally, and look set to win the entire event! Congratulations to them.

Ian Gardiner Trophy

Fifteen teams entered the LMBA Championship Teams at the club on Sunday Feb 6th, and played Pachabo-style hybrid scoring over two sessions. The top team (Ken Barnett,Liz Clery,Ryan Stephenson,Paul Huggins) and the second team after a tie-break (Tim Gauld,Paul Martin,John Pemberton,Stephen Popham) will play a 48 board match to determine the overall winner of the Ian Gardiner Trophy, and they will represent London in the Pachabo Trophy later in the year.

Novice Winners

Congratulations to Angela Hartt & Bob Hartt who won the most recent of our monthly Novice Duplicates with wine & cheese, on 3rd February with 66.67%.

Facebook

The club has had a Young Chelsea Bridge Club Facebook page for a few years now, prompted by requests from members to have a way to contact each other to arrange games with their partners, to meet new partners, for bridge-related discussions, or to discuss other issues to do with the club. The page can be found at Facebook and anyone can join and contribute to discussions or upload photos, whether or not they are a member of the club. It's a great way to keep in touch with the club and its members if you can't manage to get to Earl's Court very often.

Monica & Tim win

Congratulations to Monica Marinescu and Timothy Wilson who won the LMBA's Palmer Bayer Trophy at the YC on 30th January.

Club Championship Pairs

The first game in this year's Championship Pairs was won by David Parry & Rosie White with an impressive score of 64.10 IMPs. However there are eleven more games in the event, so there's plenty of time for others to build up good results - your best four during the year count towards your final score.

The 2010 Club Championship Pairs was won by Stephen Popham & John Pemberton with a final game of 65.30 IMPs. Frank To & Barry Myers, who had led the ranking list for most of the year, came second. Ryan Stephenson & Dave Strawbridge won the prize for the best three scores in the second half of the year, Dom Goodwin & Gordon Rainsford had the best two scores of the last three games, and previous winners Heather Dhondy and Brian Callaghan got the prize for the best single score of the year.

Pay to Play

The EBU's Pay to Play system of financing itself came into force on April 1st. It means that all up-to-date club members are now automatically EBU members without having to pay anything extra. We'll continue to issue master points directly to your EBU record - you won't need to do anything different, although we might ask some of you for some more details for our database to make sure you match up with the correct EBU record.

Any member who does not wish us to pass on any of their contact information to the EBU, and who is willing to forgo the benefits of EBU membership, should contact us so that we can mark them down as an "Anonymous" member, and remove their information from the EBU record.

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