Bridge for Africa (BfA) February 2026 Newsletter Highlights: Tournaments / BriAn / Results / Learning / Interesting Statistics

The good or bad news, depending on whether you entered in time or not, is that both the Hermanus Pairs, taking place soon on 20th and 21st March 2026, and the Darling Pairs several months hence on 6th June 2026, are both sold out, though the organisers of both have waiting lists. The Bedford teams tournament will probably take place in September or October; we'll let you know the dates once they are settled. Please let us know of any other 2026 open African tournaments planned so we can bring them to the attention of our players so those organisers too can enjoy putting up a full-house notice!

The BriAn cellphone scoring app, which is now used by 16 of the 20 clubs in the BfA network, was this month upgraded so that tournament directors can seamlessly upload results to the Pianola website immediately after a session, with players receiving their results by E-mail before they have even left the venue. You can find details of the clubs - including Constantia's Great Oaks Bridge Club which started using BriAn for the first time this month - on the Clubs page of the BfA website. Most clubs would welcome new players though, as I mentioned last month, Le Domaine in Durban and Constantina in Cape Town have both reached their limits.

While the BfA clubs using the BriAn scoring app have used it extensively to score both Mitchell and Howell pairs sessions, Le Domaine has also successfully used it for scoring teams. However, in the UK, perhaps the widest use of BriAn is to score Cafe Bridge tournaments where sets of boards are located at restaurants and pubs along a high street and players play and move between them as directed by BriAn. If you are planning a visit to the UK and would like to play in one of these - they are usually held in aid of a charitable cause - then you can click here for details. I look forward to your feedback if you do. And if you would like to organise a Cafe Bridge tournament in South Africa in aid of your favourite cause, we'd be more than happy to assist in setting it up and promoting it.

BfA's BBO team has joined forces with those of the Pinelands BBO Club to provide weekly BBO tournaments on both Monday evenings at 19h00 (for 19h15) and Tuesday afternoons at 14h00 open to players at all BfA clubs and beyond. To play in either just logon to BBO in good time and select Competitive, All tournaments, and then enter BfA in the Search bar; should you not have a partner then you may play with a Robot - although real people are much preferred!. If you are new to playing on BBO you can click here for guidance. The R 25 a head BfA RealBridge sessions organised by Le Domaine on Thursday and Saturday afternoons are also seeing increased interest; contact Rod (079 673 5077) ahead of time to play.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during February: Pierre & Jean Jordaan (BfA BBO); Mary Boshard & Cathy Robinson (Constantina Monday); Jane Waters & Brian Paxton (Village Monday); Anne Demattais (Village Thursday); Anne Demattais & June Bartlett (Constantiaberg); Betty Hall & Colette Powell (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Wilf Sperryn & Di Knowler (Le Domaine Friday A); John & Carol Coombe (Le Domaine Friday B); Brian Paxton (Constantina Friday); Jenny Gill (HDBC); Helen Maddison (Lowveld); Jody Feuilherade (Simbithi); Bernice Kay & Cathy Robinson (Steenberg); Mel Boswell & Lorraine Cooper (Bateleur); Carol Cummings (Stables); Theo Zomers & Isobel Neethling (Hout Bay); Eleanor Warren (Tokai Estate); Shirley Mills & Rina Kalac (Bergvliet); Anita Klintworth (Dragon Fly); Di England & Bridie Bullen-Smith (Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge); Jan Chrobok (BfA Pinelands BBO) and Nicky Webb (Patti Tooley Bridge Club). Well done to all of them!

The 2025/2026 season of the Buccaneer league is now in full swing; you can click here to view the results of and log after the February round 6 matches. At the top of League 1, the Pinelands 1A team has sneaked ahead of the Hermanus 1 team while the Bidding Box 2, South Cape and Table View teams are well ahead in the other three leagues, though Stilbaai 4 is gaining ground in League 4.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from Jeff Sapire, a leading South African player and teacher: What to open with freakish hands with long, strong suits, but not a lot of points (but too strong to pre-empt). AJ - AKQJxxxxx xx You want to be in at least 5D but are rather too strong for 5D. So it’s either 1D or 2C. The trouble with 2C is partner will take you for a lot more high card points, and another problem is that, if the opponents compete and say get to 5S over your 5D, you don’t have ‘defensive’ tricks. Best is to open 1D – experience has shown that with such a freakish hand, someone will bid. After all, there are 13 hearts missing out there and 26pts. I can’t ever remember it going 1D all pass. The Bridge Tips page on the BfA website provides plenty more to furnish your bridge armoury.

Turning to the monthly BfA statistics which give you a hint of how the playing of bridge is growing within the BfA clubs in South Africa: during the past 30 days our 20 member clubs recorded the results of 867 tables of bridge on Pianola up a whole 95% from the 443 sessions recorded in January 2025; 1,445 players have played in tournaments at BfA clubs since April 2024 when we started operations. This newsletter now goes to most of the more than 2,650 players in our Pianola player database to assist them to play more and better bridge (it would be nice to see even more of you playing at our clubs so we can record even more growth in the months ahead).

The most popular pages on the BfA website in February were the Results, Home, News and Bridge Tips pages followed by the Learn Bridge page; interestingly Google Analytics shows that although South Africans comprise the largest share of visitors to the BfA website, China and Singapore now occupy the next two slots well ahead of the UK and USA - maybe we can expect an influx of Asian bridge swallows shortly? The Google map of African bridge clubs has been viewed 12,660 times since it was created to help players to find new places to play; now, wouldn't it be nice if that meant another 12,000 players had pitched up for a game at our clubs?

Bridge for Africa is a non-profit company which assists bridge players in Africa to play more and better bridge by providing Internet marketing, scoring and administrative services to clubs currently ranging from the largest in South Africa's Western Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Mpumulanga to amongst the smallest. You will find previous editions of our newsletters in the news section of the Bridge for Africa website. We welcome enquiries from other African bridge clubs interested in using our services.

We look forward to seeing you playing at our clubs and in our online sessions in March!