November 2024 Highlights: Bridge Schedule / Bridge Results / Bridge Tips / Statistics

This is the eighth newsletter of Bridge for Africa (BfA), a non-profit company which assists bridge players in Africa to play more and better bridge; you will find previous editions of our newsletters in the news section of the Bridge for Africa website. Attached you will find a one page description of the services we can provide to bridge clubs, such as the ones where you play.

If you're planning to spend part of the holiday season away from home and are looking for a friendly game of bridge near your vacation destination, then you can use the bridge club directory or African bridge club map on the BfA website to find a nearby club - just contact the club first to make sure they're not closed over the festive season.

Although it was originally intended that the now popular Hermanus Pairs Tournament be held on the weekend after Easter each year, in 2025 it is going to be held on 4th and 5th April before the Swallows head north so put those dates in your brand new 2025 diary now. Click here for a flyer with the full details. As you will see, one of the nice things about this tournament is that there is no requirement to be member of the SABF or any other bridge union in order to compete; it is open to all bridge players and we look forward to seeing you and your bridge friends playing there in force. Incidentally if you know of any other bridge tournaments, including charity events, taking place anywhere in Africa in the months ahead, please send me details so we can publicise them and so swell the turnout.

BfA's weekly online bridge offerings now comprise RealBridge sessions at 09h00 on Thursdays and 14h00 on Saturdays - you can contact Rod Pienaar on 079 673-5077 beforehand to arrange entry at just R25 a session - as well as a BB$ 1.50 24 board BBO session at 14h00 on Tuesdays for which you can register up to 2 hours before the game by clicking on this link:

https://www.bridgebase.com/v3/login?cmd=tourneyList&style=hp:BFA

or by logging into BBO and selecting Competitive, All tournaments, and entering BfA in the Search bar. Anyone can play in our online bridge sessions and you do not have to be a member of any club or other bridge organisation in order to take part. However, note that these online sessions will be suspended over the festive season with our last session of the year on 19th December and our first session of 2025 on 7th January.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club in November: Andre Wagenaar (BfA BBO); Patty Geddes and Kim Wray (Constantina Monday); Katinka Steere (Constantina Friday); Craig Paxton and partner (Constantiaberg); Ian Glenn (Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club); Trish Curzon and Colleen Gower (Village Monday); John Bryant (Village Thursday); Clyde Mallinson (BfA / Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge) and Dino Zolezzi and Richard Moore (BfA / Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge). Well done to all of them! This month we created a new competition to find the most improved player across all the sessions played at BfA clubs in the past six months and the first winner is Peta McAdam who increased her average by 8.54%. Incidentally, you can click on the Competitions button while viewing results in Pianola to see the details of the other contenders in each of these monthly competitions.

On the results page of the BfA website we now post the results of the Buccaneer BBO team of four competition which pits 4 sections of 6 teams each from across the Western Cape province, including the Southern Cape, against each other in a highly competitive league taking place from August of one year to June of the next. As of October the Pinelands 1A team is heading the log but there's lots more buccaneering bridge to come. The November results will be available on the BfA website in the next few days.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's bridge tip from top bridge teacher Jeff Sapire: Before you jump in a new suit as Opener (which is forcing to game) ask yourself ‘if my partner has a minimum of 5 or so points, should we be in game?’ So though a hand like SAx HAKJxx DKQxx Cxx is a very good one, it’s not good enough for force, after 1H-1S; ? Just rebid 2D and see what happens. 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 tips sent out to date are shown on the Bridge Tips page on the BfA website, which we have revamped to make it easier to use.

I am sure that you, like me, when switching on your phone or your computer, never give a thought to the anonymous, but very real, programmers who wrote the code you are using on your device. So it's been a breath of fresh air this past year to meet up in person with both Victor Lesk and James Ward, the respective developers of the BriAn cellphone scoring app and the Pianola website we all so love, when they visited South Africa. Both are quirky individuals who take a deep personal interest in your experiences using their products and regularly seek feedback and ideas on how they can improve their offerings - which could include some joint developments in future. What a contrast to keen bridge player Bill Gates or to Google's CEO who bragged just last week that some 25% of new Google code is written using artificial intelligence; mind you, they do both have audiences of millions so maybe its understandable they're somewhat remote from their African bridge-playing customers.

Turning to BfA statistics, during November our member clubs recorded the results of 463 (up from 362 in October) tables of bridge on Pianola; 706 players have played in tournaments at BfA clubs since the middle of April when we started operations. This newsletter now goes to most of the more than 1,500 players, mostly on the mailing lists of BfA member clubs, in our Pianola player database to assist them to play more and better bridge. As you would expect, the most popular pages on the BfA website were the home and results pages, followed by the news and bridge tips pages. The Google map of African bridge clubs has been viewed 7,029 (up from 6,620 at end October) times since it was created.