Bridge for Africa (BfA) January 2026 Newsletter Highlights: Bridge Clubs / Tournaments / Results / Education / Statistics

A belated Happy New Year to you! Speaking of which, the New Years Eve online RealBridge tournament organised by the Le Domaine Club near Durban was a great success with many even dressing up to the nines to make it a suitably festive occasion.

BfA bridge clubs have started 2026 with a bang. Another two Cape Town bridge clubs, the Bergvliet and Steenberg clubs which both play on Wednesdays, have successfully started using the BriAn app to score their tournaments, while Patti Tooley's novice player group has also started using BriAn to score their weekly post-lesson play (and Pianola to distribute the results) as part of a practical learning process complementing the theory her students are taught; her students love the innovative approach.

Meanwhile, the popular Constantina Club, Cape Town's largest, which plays on Mondays and Fridays, has closed its 2026 membership lists due to overwhelming demand; there is talk of opening additional clubs / sessions in Cape Town's Southern Suburbs to cater for all the players in the area looking for more friendly but competitive and affordable options; using the BriAn app, clubs keep costs down and take all the agony out of scoring. Please let me know if there is interest in playing at or organising a new club.

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 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 BfA RealBridge sessions organised by Le Domaine on Thursday and Saturday afternoons are also seeing increased interest.

The popular Hermanus Pairs takes place on 20th and 21st March 2026, while you can click here to read the details of the Darling Pairs on 6th June 2026, which also promises to be a sold out affair so enter early to avoid disappointment. The Bedford teams tournament will probably take place in September or October with the Bidding Box Pairs possibly coming in between; 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.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during January: Andre Wagener (BfA BBO); Garret Cullum (Constantina Monday); Jane Waters & Brian Paxton (Village Monday); Sue & Anthony Goldstein (Village Thursday); Anne Demattais & June Bartlett (Constantiaberg); Louise & Dave Gibbon (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Pavine Ruscoe (Le Domaine Friday A); Jack & Carole Dommisse (Le Domaine Friday B); Kate van Rooyen (Le Domaine Friday C); Doreen Dawson & Vicky Falls (Constantina Friday); Ian Glenn (HDBC); Helen Maddison (Lowveld); Jody Feuilherade (Simbithi); Lorraine Cooper & Mel Boswell (Bateleur); Gill Buchholtz (Stables); Martia Katz (Hout Bay); Suzanne Kilpin (Tokai Estate), Kay Ebrahim (Bergvliet), Anita Klintworth (Dragon Fly); and John Bowen (Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge). 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 January round 5 matches. At this point the Hermanus 1 team is a shade ahead of Pinelands 1A at the top of League 1 while the Bidding Box 2, South Cape and Table View teams are well ahead in the other three leagues. One team has unfortunately been forced to withdraw so Jan Chrobok (082 650-4809 ) is looking for a team to replace them for the rest of the season.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from Jeff Sapire, a leading South African player and teacher: Jumping to 3NT after a one-over-one response. 1D-1H; 3NT shows something like the following: SKJx Hx DAKJ10xx CAx. A long minor (solid or nearly); shortage in partner’s suit; stoppers in the other 2 suits. The kind of hand that will have a good shot at making 9 tricks. Note: Balanced hands of 18-19 will jump to 2NT. Incidentally. if you have any good bridge tips, maybe picked up from your own teachers long ago, that could be usefully added to the Bridge Tips on the Bridge for Africa website, please send them to me.

For a Xmas present, I bought my son a copy of Bridge: a Love Story, Zia Mahmoud's entertaining autobiography - and made sure to read it first before handing it over. It is packed with bridge hands and advice, as well as amusing anecdotes. You would love his story about how a group of top players went to play in an elite tournament held at a swanky European hotel. Omar Sharif was one of them and his forfeit for losing a group wager was to be the hotel doorman for a day. As you can imagine, arriving guests were bowled over to find one of their favourite film stars deferentially opening their car doors.

Turning to the more mundane (for you maybe but not for me) BfA statistics where we continue seeing growth, during the past 30 days our 18 member clubs recorded the results of 709 tables of bridge on Pianola up 60% from the 443 sessions recorded in January 2025 (that's the kind of growth investors dream of); 1,383 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 2,544 players in our Pianola player database to assist them to play more and better bridge. The Google map of African bridge clubs has been viewed 12,269 times since it was created to help players to find new places to play. Apart from the Home Page, the most popular pages on the BfA website in January were again the Results, News and Bridge Tips pages followed by the Learn Bridge page.

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.

As usual we look forward to your comments and feedback. We look forward to seeing you playing at our clubs and in our online sessions in the days ahead!