July 2024 Highlights: Bridge Schedule / New BfA Clubs / Club Results / Bridge Tips / Using Pianola / Staying Alive

This is the fourth newsletter of Bridge for Africa (BfA) which assists bridge players in Africa to play more and better bridge. We welcome your suggestions on how, together, we can better achieve that seemingly simple objective (and thank you to those that have already contacted us with ideas).

I have delayed sending this E-mail for a few days so that I can report that the A Section of the successful Darling Pairs Competition yesterday (including yummy catering and generous prizes from local sponsors) was won by Claire Whitburn and Chris Bosenberg, while Elaine Guinsberg and Shirley Glyn won the B Section. It was nice competing against such a nice bunch of people, many of whom we hadn't encountered at the bridge table before. The full results will be found on the BfA website later today.

Next up is the Bedford Teams competition, my favourite annual tournament, scheduled for the weekend of 20th September; you should contact David Girdwood ([email protected]) to enter or to request assistance in forming a team or finding a lift - but you might first consider arranging your accommodation as it's in short supply there due to all the windfarm installations taking place in the district. Hopefully, we will see more similar tournaments taking place, especially come summer when the swallows return. If you know of any please let me know so we can promote them on the BfA website and in our E-mails.

The number of players, from across the country and beyond, playing in BfA's online BBO tournaments on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 14h00, has shown steady growth but we would like to see even more players taking part. These are now 24 (up from 21) board sessions costing just BB$ 1.50 per player - and you don't need to belong to a club, union or federation in order to take part from the warm winter comfort of your home. Contact Judy Wulf ([email protected]) or just go to https://bridgebase.com/V3/login?cmd=tourneyList&style=hp:BFA or search on BBO for BfA.

During July the bridge clubs operating at the Tokai Estate retirement village joined the BfA network and Neil Armitage ran BriAn training courses for their tournament directors as well as for those of three other Western Cape clubs we hope to see joining in the near future. We will keep you posted on these. A search of our Pianola database shows that 455 players have played in tournaments at BfA clubs since the middle of April when we started operations.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club in July: Pierre and Jean Jordaan (BfA BBO); Kim Wray and Patty Geddes (Constantina Monday); Mary Boshard (Constantina Friday); Anne Demattais and June Bartlett (Constantiaberg); Graham Spolander (Village Monday); Ashleigh Vergunst (Village Thursday); and Joline du Toit (Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club). It's nice to see new names bubbling to the top each month. Incidentally, you can click on the Competitions button while in Pianola to see the details of the other contenders in each of these monthly club competitions.

As a bridge player I am sure you know that the better your bridge skills, the more you enjoy the game, which is why we use these newsletters to help you do just that, starting with a monthly bridge tip from top bridge teacher Jeff Sapire: Overcalls at the 3 level should be a 6 card, with at least a minimum opening hand, and a suit with some quality. (2S) 3D on xx Kxx AK10xxx Qx. Each week we also include two new tips in the Pianola results E-mail sent to players in all the above competitions and more; all those sent out to date are shown on the Bridge Tips page on the BfA website.

Now those results E-mails also include a link to View Full Results clicking on which will take you through to a web page where the results of the tournament you played in are listed. If you click on your name in that results list, another page will be displayed which shows, hand by hand, how your partnership performed. Make a note of all the hands where you achieved 25% or less. Now click on the Travelers tab which takes you through to pages where, hand by hand, you can not only see what each pair bid and made, but also view each of the hands on your list so you can determine where you and your partner went wrong.

Many players stop at that point but I suggest a further course of action. Use the Snip facility on your computer (Google it if you don't know how) to copy those problem hands and paste them into a Word document which you can print and take to a weekly coffee-cum-bridge meeting with your partner and other bridge buddies. There you can pore over them, plus any other hands from newspapers or bridge books that have come to light. You might even find you can use a crispy croissant to tempt one of the players who regularly wins at your club to join you with their insights. And don't just look at the bidding, look at the leads, the play and the defence. Before too long you will find your percentage creeping up and you might even start featuring in the winner lists in these newsletters.

In our last newsletter, we introduced you to the Tournament Director (TD) video series produced by the English Bridge Union (EBU). Those of you already involved in running tournament sessions can download the EBU's TD refresher course. It poses a series of situations you might encounter at the bridge table for you to ponder and then compare your response to that of the EBU experts.

In a presentation to a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Marian Cleeves Diamond described an experiment showing that contract bridge players have increased numbers of immune cells after a game of bridge. Based on her previous work, and that of others, Diamond interprets the findings as strong evidence that an area of the brain involved in playing bridge stimulates the immune system, in particular the thymus gland that produces white blood cells called T cells, or T lymphocytes. If her study is borne out (her sample does seem to be quite small), this would be the first time a specific area of the cortex - in this case, part of the frontal lobe of the brain - has been linked with the immune system. While we're on the subject of academic research related to bridge, a new movie has just been released, Join or Die, which examines Bob Putnam's research which found that joining a club cuts one's chances of dying in the next year by 50%. Maybe the two pieces of research are related and we should all take note?

So, if you want to do your closet bridge playing friends a big favour and extend their lifespans, then you need to persuade them to join a bridge club and play there regularly. The best way to do this is to invite seven tentative bridge players around for dinner and a mini bridge tournament and at the end of the evening suggest they all reconvene at your club's next duplicate session. You can click here to download a scorecard you can use during the evening as each player partners each of the others between courses.

No sooner had I sent off our last newsletter lamenting the lack of young players coming into the game than I witnessed a keenly contested teams competition involving four teenagers taking on their their parents. Of course it was school holidays and when those ended all returned to busy schedules of work, studies and sport where bridge battles - and usually fails - to get a glimpse in. Perhaps we grandparents need to download the schools calendar so we can plan on pouncing and getting those youngsters back round the bridge table the minute term ends.

Turning to bridge statistics, during July our member clubs recorded the results of 369 (up from 278 in June) tables of bridge on Pianola and this newsletter now goes to more than 750 players, mostly on the mailing lists of BfA member clubs, to assist them to play more and better bridge. If you wish to unsubscribe then click on the link below. Our map of African bridge clubs - so far we have found 65 - has been viewed nearly 5,800 (5,000 at the end of June) times, hopefully by bridge players looking for somewhere convenient to play - maybe you have already met them at your club? This week I met one who confessed she used the map for planning her bridge travels around South Africa.

As usual we look forward to both your comments / feedback and to encountering you at BfA face to face clubs or at our online sessions in the days ahead.