February 2023 newsletter highlights: Impala moves to RealBridge / Monthly Sunday Pairs and Lunch / Charity Bridge in aid of StreetSmart / SAWBA postponed / Mixed Teams and Seniors Trials /  Hermanus Easter Pairs / Congress in Cape Town / Beginners' Course / Bridge Suppers and Weekends / Even more Statistics

As always, there's a lot of bridge activities planned, so get out your now not-so-new 2023 diaries and take note. More information can be found in the attachments to this E-mail; by clicking on the links in the text below; or by visiting the WCBU website or our Facebook page.

One of Cape Town's strongest bridge clubs, Impala, will be playing its last face to face session at the WPCC Bowls Clubhouse today, Tuesday 21 February at 7.15pm. Players are encouraged to come early for drinks and dessert. Starting on Tuesday 28th February at 19h15, Impala will be playing Online on RealBridge. Players from around the country - and even beyond - who would like to match their skills against the Impala cohort should contact Andrew Cruise <[email protected]>.

The Western Cape Bridge Union and Personal Trust invite players in the Cape Town area, including visitors, to participate in our February final Sunday of the month Pairs and Lunch event to be held at the Bridge Centre in Green Point on Sunday 26th February 2023 starting at 10h00. The cost (inclusive of lunch and a glass of wine) is now still a bargain at R100.00 per person. Contact Shirley Phillips ([email protected]) to enter or to assist you in finding a partner. You'll be surprised how many of your old friends you will find sitting at the tables waiting to welcome you! Our monthly charity BBO tournament, this one in aid of StreetSmart, which raises funds for street children’s education, skills training and family reunification programmes, will take place on Friday 3rd March 2023 at 09h30 - just logon to BBO, select Virtual Clubs - South Africa and you will see our session listed. We look forward to seeing you at both these events.

Trials to select a Mixed team - each pair must comprise a female and a non-female player - to represent South Africa in the African zonals and, hopefully, beyond, will take place towards the end of March, together with the trials for a Seniors team; the dates will be finalised nearer the time. While March might be a quiet month for big tournaments here in the Western Cape, April is going to be busy. A new red point event, the Hermanus Easter Pairs is planned for the weekend following Easter which, this year, means 14th and 15th April; the attached brochure has details. Congress Teams from 23rd to 27th April 2023 and Congress Pairs from 27th to 30th April 2023 will both be held at the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town. Entry for all these events is through the SABF Online website. Sadly, given all the preparatory work completed,  SAWBA has been postponed to a date, yet to be announced, later in the year.

Moving to ways of learning or improving your bridge, our next beginners' bridge 101 course starts on 1st March using Zoom and RealBridge; the course brochure is attached and we encourage aspirant players from around the country to register for this highly praised course. Carol Stanton, who is leading the teaching, is also looking for volunteers to mentor the players as they play hands on RealBridge. The next of leading bridge teacher Jeff Sapire's brief bridge tips: If partner bids a suit, even if you are void; if you’re thinking about bidding NT, don’t worry about that suit. Similarly, if you bid a terrible suit (6543) don’t worry about the suit either for NT.

Now, it might appear from a close reading of these newsletters that they are only intended for those who play in duplicate bridge tournaments - nothing could be further from the truth! Bridge is primarily a social game and, now that we are all playing face to face, we encourage players to invite friends round to make up foursomes. Better still is to arrange an eightsome bridge supper or even bridge weekend. In case you have mislaid the instructions and score sheets for organising these that we sent out two years ago, you will find them attached again to this newsletter - even including some recipes in case you are gastronomically challenged. With long winter nights on the horizon, what warmer way could there be to shelter from the frost and gales?

And just because people enjoy playing with friends at home rather in tournaments, doesn't mean that they don't try to improve their game. In fact, I have a sneaky suspicion that the reason the Learn Bridge page on the WCBU website, which provides links to Internet bridge teaching resources, is our fourth most popular page, viewed nearly 2,100 times since January 2021, is because it has been found and used by the home bridge community. Maybe you should start sending the link to that page as well as these newsletters and other educational E-mails to your seemingly less competitive friends?

Finally, some more statistics - I'm surprised how many of you have commented on enjoying these so I have added a couple to spice things up a bit more. Each day I receive a dozen or more spam E-mails sent through the enquiry form on the website - and it's not Russian blondes looking for partners but mostly so-called search engine optimisers who believe they can bring more traffic to the website - for a fat fee, of course. In the past two months the results from more than 529 (up from 503) tables of face to face and online bridge have been recorded in the Pianola database on the WCBU website where players can compare and analyse their performance while also giving them the opportunity to compare their results in the two formats; Bidding Box is the latest club to publish their results on the WCBU website and we encourage more clubs to do likewise. Since the beginning of January 2023, the WCBU website has been used by 1,139 visitors who read 7,142 pages of information during 3,281 visits. Of the visitors, who live in 34 different countries, 86% reside in South Africa, 5% in the United Kingdom, 2.6% in America, and 1% in Australia; 39% live in Cape Town, 27% in Gauteng and 2% in Hermanus. As you would expect, the home page was the most popular page so far this year, followed by the results, Bridge Clubs, Lectures and Upcoming pages. Some 44% of visitors use a computer; 44% use a cell-phone; and 11% a tablet. And that's enough statistics for this month!