Once again Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat and many of us are planning holiday travel; at the same time most bridge clubs are planning a break in operations for a week or two (click here for details of when BfA clubs will be out of action). For those of you desperate for your regular bridge fix, the map of African bridge clubs or the Clubs page on the BfA website provides you with bridge contacts, if not a tournament, at your holiday destination. However, whether you are staying at home or holidaying away, you can play against bridge friends old and new around the world in Le Domaine's New Year's RealBridge tournament starting on 31st December at 19h00; contact Louise Gibbon (0825779942) ahead of time to enter.

If you haven't already, once you get back home you should start planning to play in the Hermanus Pairs on 20th and 21st March 2026; click here for the brochure with details. We'll let you know the dates of the Darling, Bidding Box, Bedford and other tournaments once we have them. Please let us know of any other 2026 open African tournaments planned.

Some of the clubs we have approached regarding using the BriAn app to score their sessions have given the weak excuse that their players are too elderly to learn something new. Meanwhile the feedback from the 15 BfA clubs already using BriAn is that some of their senior players have been amongst the most adept in picking it up - as you should already have experienced at the bridge table, you underestimate seniors' skills at your peril! Maybe your club's New Year resolution should be to start using BriAn from the beginning of 2026.

As mentioned in our last newsletter, the Calendar on the BfA website has been updated to comprehend the sessions organised by BfA clubs including our Thursday and Saturday RealBridge sessions as well as our Tuesday afternoon BBO sessions - you can find these last by logging on to BBO and selecting Competitive, All tournaments, and entering BfA in the Search bar. Anyone can play in our online bridge! You do not have to be a member of any club or organisation so please join us - it's nice to see players from across the country and beyond matching their bridge skills against those elsewhere!

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during November 2025: David Boyes (BfA BBO); Patty Geddes (Constantina Monday); Wilson McLeod (Village Monday); Patty Geddes & Kim Wray (Village Thursday); Craig & Brian Paxton (Constantiaberg); Richard Moore & Debbie Bagg (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Tony Rocke & Caryl Gerza (Le Domaine Friday A); John & Coral Coombe (Le Domaine Friday B); Eila Steyl (Constantina Friday); Ian Holdsworth (HDBC); Lesley Bownes (Lowveld); Karen Teichman (Simbithi); Carina Wiid & Frans Schutte (Bateleur); Ann Jager & Verne Terry (Stables); Theo Zomers & Isobel Neethling (Hout Bay); Wendy Sparks (Dragonfly); and Bill Wilkie & Clyde Mallinson (Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge). Well done to all of them! Incidentally, if in Pianola looking at your results, the quickest way to skim through the hands is to click on Travellers then select All Hands and scroll down.

The 2025/2026 season of the Buccaneer league is now in full swing; Once we receive the latest results, which we hope will be this weekend, you will be able to click here to view the results of and log after the November round.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from Jeff Sapire, a leading South African player and teacher: Take out double or overcall? When your rho opens the bidding (1H): With Axxx x Kxx AKxxx, double, as it opens more doors but with AKxxx x Kxx Axxx rather bid 1S. In other words, BID a 5 card major, but a 5 card minor can be overlooked in favour of double. Until Monday, ebooksbridge.com is holding a 40% off Black Friday sale where one of the best bargains for improving your declarer play is the PDF version of Accurate Cardplay Part 1: Elimination Play on sale at a special price of just US$ 2.99. If that's too expensive, then, of course, the Bridge Tips on the Bridge for Africa website are free of charge all year round!

At university, my girlfriend was a very good bridge player. Some Thursday evenings saw us venturing into Hillbrow, there to play rubber bridge for money at the exclusive Crockfords Bridge Club. The older members vied to have this seemingly innocent young couple playing at their table even though we regularly won enough to pay for us to go dinner dancing at an upmarket venue two nights later. We even once won the club jackpot for bidding and making a grand slam after 21h00. Sadly Crockfords seems to be no more and high stakes rubber bridge has taken a back seat to the more genteel duplicate. As I watched the results from all the BfA clubs being uploaded to Pianola recently, I remembered the story of the Australian dad who was horrified to find bookies were laying odds on the outcome of his son's junior school sports matches. With South Africans venturing more than R 1.5 trillion a year into, mostly, online betting I wondered how much, if any, was, unbeknownst to us, being wagered on the results of our bridge games? Maybe there's more than one jackpot hanging on whether you bid and make that vulnerable grand slam next time round!

One of the most flamboyant bridge gamblers of all time - in his youth at least - was Zia Mahmood whose wonderful new autobiography, Bridge: a Love Story, can also be purchased at a 40% discount and downloaded as part of the ebooksbridge.com Black Friday sale. So buy it as the perfect festive season gift for your favourite bridge partner with the intention of reading it first; the problem is you might get so carried away with laughter and admiration that you never pass it on!

Attached to our last newsletter was a summary of good etiquette. I subsequently received queries about the statement "You don’t have to alert after 3 level." To clarify, you announce bids only during the first round of bidding; you must not alert a bid above the 3NT level. You can ask the meaning of a bid when it's your time to bid but best practice is not to do so above the three level unless you intend to bid. At the end of the bidding the player on lead can ask about bids made by the opposition before leading face down and asking "Any questions?" so partner can also ask. You can find more details about the rules regarding alerts and announcing on the TD corner of the BfA website and in the succinct summary from the Newcastle (Geordie not KZN or Oz) Bridge Club.

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 15 member clubs recorded the results of 663 tables of bridge on Pianola; 1,260 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 2,350 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 11,485 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 November 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.