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

Congratulations to Diniar Minwalla and Omphemetse Moedi on winning the 2026 Hermanus Pairs tournament where more than 100 players from South Africa, Botswana and Zambia competed. They were followed by locals Ian Glenn and Ian Holdsworth and Capetonians Stephen McBride and Rona Holmes in second and third places. Judy Wulf and her HDBC team, including TD Andre Truter, are to be highly commended on delivering yet another polished event. You can click here for the detailed results.

Meanwhile up in the Lowveld, the team from Nelspruit won the first triangular tournament - scored using the BriAn app - involving teams from the Lowveld, Bateleur and Nelspruit clubs. Well done to Renee Duncan on pioneering this competition so efficiently.

Sadly the Darling Pairs Tournament in June, which had attracted entries from 40+ pairs, has had to be cancelled because of factors beyond the organisers' control. We can but hope that the fast rising price of petrol is not a dampener on attendance at the Bedford Bridge Tournament, tentatively scheduled for the last weekend of September. Please let us know of any other 2026 open African tournaments planned so we can bring them to the attention of our players so the organisers too can enjoy putting up a full-house notice!

Fortunately as the cost of traveling rises, we still have the option of online bridge. 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. BfA's BBO team organises Tuesday afternoon BBO tournaments at 14h00 open to players at all BfA clubs and beyond. To play 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.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during February: Liz Cork & Anne Demattais (Constantina Monday); Pam Field & Helen Beatty (Village Monday); Wilson McLeod (Village Thursday); Neil Armitage (Constantiaberg); Richard Moore (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Lynn & Terry Thompson (Le Domaine Friday A); Linda Lilley (Le Domaine Friday B); Candy Cahill & Maryann Dove (Constantina Friday); Ian Glenn (HDBC); Helen Maddison (Lowveld); Kim Snowball (Simbithi); Di Fleck & Carolyn Forsyth (Steenberg); Margo Lilley & Nan Meyer (Bateleur); Franz Tieber & Peter Isherwood (Stables); Marie & Roger Perry (Hout Bay); Geoff Davies (Tokai Estate); Tessa Minter (Bergvliet); Shirley Holmes (Dragon Fly); Di England & Bridie Bullen-Smith (Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge); Dave Thayser (Great Oaks); and Andre Wagenaar (BfA BBO). It's nice to see new names - and new clubs - appearing each month.

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 March round 7 matches. At the top of League 1, the Fishhoek 1 team has sneaked just ahead of the Pinelands 1 and Hermanus 1 teams while the Bidding Box 2, South Cape and Table View teams are well ahead in the other three leagues.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from Jeff Sapire, a leading South African player and teacher, on leading against a pass-preference auction: When it goes 1H-1S; 2D-2H responder has given preference to opener’s first suit. But when it goes 1H-1S; 2D-pass responder has now given preference to opener’s second suit, by passing. Anytime you encounter a pass-preference auction, lead a trump. It may sometimes cost a trick initially, but often it comes back. The reason is that dummy will be very short in opener’s other suit, so you want to cut down ruffs. All other leads go on the back-burner. The Bridge Tips page on the Bridge for Africa website provides plenty more to furnish your bridge armoury.

A new iPhone version of the BriAn app went live today; it should update automatically on player iPhones during the next few days. It now provides a feature for TDs to upload results to Pianola using iPhones as part of the finalization process. Please alert your TD should you encounter teething problems.

When I first learned bridge as a school boy on a Karoo farm, I was taught the Culbertson System even though it had long, long been superseded by the Goren and other more modern bidding systems just about everywhere else (progress comes slowly in that part of the world). Sadly, though Eli Culbertson was the original promoter of the game back in the 1930's, his name rarely gets a mention these days unlike several of his contemporaries whose names are regularly on our bridge lips.

His first bridge and business partner was Oswald Jacoby who popularised the Jacoby transfer - which maybe should have been called the Willner convention after the Swedish player who actually invented it. In like vein, should the Gerber convention have been named after John Gerber, the Texan who introduced it to America in 1938, or the Swiss pair William Konigsberger and Win Nye who invented it in 1936? You'll be relieved to know that insurance executive and amateur bridge player Easley Blackwood did indeed invent the Blackwood convention on New Year's Eve 1933 after he and his partner bid six hearts missing two aces which his opponents promptly cashed. For a while I thought the more modern Ghestem convention was a menu item at a Middle Eastern bridge banquet but it turns out it was devised by the French bridge and checkers player Pierre Ghestem. Maybe in true South African renaming fashion, we need to revise our convention cards containing all those names we blurt out at the table without further thought and replace the names of the shady imposters with those of the true originators!

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 924 tables of bridge on Pianola up more than 100% from the 443 sessions recorded in January 2025; 1,494 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 2,736 players in our Pianola player database to assist them to play more and better bridge. More than 1,200 boards were dealt using BfA dealing machines in March.

Google Analytics, the software that monitors the usage of websites, recorded that the most popular pages on the BfA website in March were the Results, Home, News and Bridge Tips pages followed at a distance by the Learn Bridge page. The number of visitors to the BfA website in March was 76% higher than in February, with both Singapore and China mysteriously providing more visitors than South Africa and with Nigerians taking fourth spot; maybe, unbeknown to us, there's an shadowy online betting syndicate taking wagers on all our tournaments. The Google map of African bridge clubs has been viewed 13,175 times since it was created to help players to find new places to play.

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.