February has seen bridge players returning to face to face bridge. I had hoped to say streaming back but so far it's more like a strong trickle. Let's hope that turns to a flood now that club organisers have sorted out the logistics of vaccination certificates, mask wearing and, at one club, contending with unvaccinated anti-vaxers who insist on their right to play. The Clubs page on the WCBU lists all the affiliated clubs and when they play. You can also find many of the session results on the website too. At the same time, online sessions are continuing and we hope to attract a critical mass of players to both formats so there are competitive fields for every event.

The WCBU's Welcome Back bridge event at the bridge centre on Sunday 27th February 2022 saw players at 10 tables competing. Congratulations to Erica Zimet and Ruth Bononi on coming first, closely followed by Mark Kenyon and Michele Alexander and then the Jethwas. The full results can be found on the WCBU website results page. It was great to see so many familiar faces playing at the bridge centre again as well as some new ones.

Further congratulations are in order. Andrew Cruise won Impala's month long Mukheibir Pairs competition, despite having played with three different partners. The Bryant Team (John Bryant, Mark Kenyon, Gail and Selwyn Gersowsky and Anthony Abbott) is the winner of the February 2022 Personal Trust RealBridge Teams event; entries are open for the March edition of the competition, details of which can be found here. Further afield, the Francis Team (Sheila Francis, Sandy Wentzel, Lotte Sorensen and Susanne Braatvedt) won the KZNBU's Jenny Armstrong Swiss teams event. They were followed by the Beinart and Masojada teams. Well done to all the winners!

Looking ahead, the annual South African Womens' Bridge Association (SAWBA) Congress takes place during the first half of March; we will post the results on the WCBU website as they come to hand.  Just a few weeks after that, the Southern Cape Bridge Union's Heidi Atkinson Memorial Pairs competition is scheduled for 7th and 8th May, followed a week later by the WCBU's Western Cape Pairs on 14th and 15th May. SABF Congress is scheduled for June and July 2022.

We have a number of bridge eduation events coming up, all of which are open to bridge players around the country and not just in the Western Cape. Our last tournament director course was oversubscribed so we have scheduled a repeat for March; you can read the flyer here. Our next free Personal Trust sponsored Zoom workshop for intermediate players takes on Sunday 16th January 2022 at 15h00; more details, including the Zoom link, will be posted on the WCBU website and in a separate E-mail nearer the time so watch for it. The slides from previous lectures are also on the site.

After two years away from the bridge table, some of us are rusty about the rules of bridge so we have commissioned Michael Alexander to prepare a series of brief articles on the rules, with a new one posted on the WCBU website each Sunday. So far he has covered what dummy can and cannot do; what to do when there is a lead out of turn; and, today, communicating unauthorised information.

The next edition of our very successful Beginners Bridge 101 course, run on Zoom / RealBridge by Carol Stanton, runs for 6 weeks starting on Friday 25th March at 10h00. Each two hour lesson comprises one hour of theory followed by one hour of practical supervised play on RealBridge. Participants receive a copy of Paul Marston's ‘Introduction to Bridge’. For those of you who have completed the Beginner Bridge 101 and 102 courses, the next 103 course on the Language of Bidding starts on Wednesday 9th March at 19h30.  We continue to seek experienced players to mentor the beginners while they play RealBridge test hands or to participate in our schools bridge teaching program which we are restarting. Mentors / teachers are remunerated and we will be advertising the services of professional bridge teachers who mentor on the WCBU website. For more information or to sign up please contact Carol Stanton: [email protected].

This newsletter would not be complete without some statistics. So far this year the results from more than 570 tables of bridge have been recorded in the Pianola database on the WCBU website. Since the beginning of January 2022, the WCBU website has been used by 1,282 visitors who read 8,645 pages of information during 3,510 visits. Of the visitors, who live in 23 different countries, 90% reside in South Africa, 4% in the USA, and 2.5% in the United Kingdom; 53% live in Cape Town, 17% in Gauteng and 3% in Hermanus. As you would expect, the home page was the most popular page, followed by the results, JM Bridge, Bridge Clubs and Bridge Lessons pages. And that's enough statistics for this month!

Finally, a reminder to all SABF members: your 2022 subs of R 100 each should be paid before month end if you wish to play in SABF sanctioned tournaments. Members in the Western Cape should pay theirs into WCBU's FNB bank account number 62926125263 clearly stating your SABF number, name and 2022Subs as reference. Please note that our ABSA account has been closed.