February 2024 Highlights: Western Cape Hermanus Pairs / Charity Tournaments / TD Classes / Bridge Tip / Bridge Map

This weekend the Western Cape welcomes bridge players from around the country competing in the National Congress teams and pairs events taking place at the Kelvin Grove Club next week. We hope you out of towners enjoy your visit!

As usual there's a host of bridge tournaments and education coming up. More information on many of the topics in this newsletter can be found in the attachments to this E-mail; by clicking on the links in the text below; or by visiting the Western Cape Bridge Union (WCBU) website.

The red point Western Cape Hermanus Pairs click here for the brochure) takes place on 5th and 6th April - if you are visiting the Western Cape for Easter, why not stay on for a few more days to play in a tournament which received rave reviews from players last year? Looking further ahead, the SABF Open, Women's and Mixed Trials take place in late April and early May (flyer is also attached). To date there is no mention of a trial for us seniors? Since the SABF has agreed to no longer use member subs or financial reserves for overseas travel, the WCBU is planning a fund raising tournament, date still to be decided, to raise funds to defray the costs of Western Cape players selected to play abroad. We will also assist in trying to raise sponsorship as we have successfully done in the past.

The WCBU's BBO Friday Charity Tournaments continue to pull in a big field, a win-win for players and for the charities supported. During March we will be supporting Souper Troopers (1st), Helderberg and other hospices (8th), the Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA)(15th) and the Friendship Club (22nd), with the tournament on the 29th available for sponsoring a non Western Cape charity (come on, surely you know of another charity we can support?). Because of Congress the final Sunday Personal Trust bridge and lunch will not be held in February but will resume on 24th March - not 31st March, note, as that is Easter Sunday.

To date nearly 30 participants from around the country have signed up for the WCBU club tournament director (TD) training course, also on Zoom and to be run by the Western Cape's Michael Alexander. Unfortunately it turns out that the TD course materials of the English Bridge Union (EBU) that we have been licensed to use are designed for face to face training so there is a delay while they modify them for delivery via Zoom. On the positive side, the EBU course covers both face to face and online tournaments; hopefully we can start building a local base of online TDs so we don't have to use expensive, overseas-based resources for our big online tournaments. As it is, some of the unsung heroes of South African bridge today are the likes of Les Lombard, Ricardo Rodrigues and the other TDs who, day in and day out, efficiently run the Sunshine Coast's BBO sessions which bring together players from the Eastern Cape country districts and beyond - maybe it's time they were given the opportunity to perform on the national red point BBO stage alongside Rob and Rod? Still on upskilling, last week end Andre Truter ran a ScoreBridge refresher course for several Western Cape TDs which was very well received.

Moving from technical training to bridge skills improvement, here is the next of leading bridge teacher Jeff Sapire's brief bridge tips: It’s okay to open 1NT with 2 doubletons, but only on certain, specific hands. 1) AQ  KJx  Jxxxxxx  AJ   Much better to open 1NT, rather than 1D-say 1H; and have to jump rebid 3D 2) Kx  AQxx  Kxxxx  Kx   If you open 1D and partner responds 1S, you MUST NOT reverse 2H. So easier to open 1NT. We all list splinters in our bridge armoury but how often do we use them? Recent WCBU BBO charity tournaments featured three hands where a splinter could have been used (see here), but, strangely precious few did.

Those of you who play at Joburg's Orchards Bridge Club will be familiar with the BriAnBridge tournament scoring app which uses cell phones for scoring rather than BridgeMates. The WCBU is closely watching the implementation of the same system at the soon to be affiliated / associated ConstantiaBerg Bridge Club. If all goes according to plan, the WCBU will sponsor the rollout of the system to other clubs - mostly non-affiliated - in the Western Cape and even beyond, along with pre-dealt boards where there's a convenient, cost effective way to deliver them, all aimed at growing the game. We will keep you posted as we work out the details. The BriAnBridge app was originally designed for Cafe / Pub bridge tournaments where players move from venue to venue, at each of which the next set of boards is stored; down the road we could envisage running similar events here, with one up the West Coast, another in the Somerset West / Hermanus area and a third in the Boland making for a nice day's outing into the lovely Cape countryside.

In our last newsletter, I introduced you to our Google Map of South African bridge clubs. Since then more clubs have been added to the map, including a bright red "drop" in the middle of the map for the Bloemfontein Bridge Club. Maybe upcountry players driving home from Congress should consider taking a well-needed bridge break in Bloem to swell the delightful Annalie Kachelhoffer's 24 strong band for a session or two? By the way, that map has been viewed more nearly 1,200 times during its short existence, not surprising because if you do a Google search for "South African Bridge Clubs" or something similar that map and the WCBU's Bridge Clubs page are always near the top of the list and we can but hope that several hundred of that 1,200 have turned up to play at a club somewhere. Now to find the details of that elusive Pofadder Bridge Club.....

In the last two months, the Western Cape Bridge Union (WCBU) website itself has been used by 1,369 visitors who have read more than 7,200 pages of information. As you would expect, the Home page was the most popular page, followed by the Results, Bridge Clubs, and News pages. Next in popularity after those comes the Bridge Lessons page where visitors can learn and improve their bridge at the click or two of a mouse. Of the website visitors, 37% live in the Western Cape, 35% in Gauteng and 9% in KwaZulu Natal. Some 39% of visitors use a computer; 56% use a cell-phone; and 5% a tablet. In the past two months the results from 625 (up from 430) tables of face to face and online bridge - including, now, those from Constantiaberg's weekly tournament - have been recorded in the Pianola database on the WCBU website. And that's more than enough statistics to keep you mulling till our next newsletter!

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As always, we look forward to your comments / feedback - we would like more of both of these please - and to encountering you at the WCBU virtual and real bridge tables in the days ahead. In the meantime, stay safe and enjoy your bridge.