Bridge for Africa (BfA) October 2025 Newsletter Highlights: Bridge Clubs / Results / Education / Statistics

The end of the year is approaching and we should be starting to think about next year's tournaments starting with the wonderful Hermanus Pairs taking place on 20th and 21st March 2026. Darling, Bidding Box and Bedford are also all considering open tournaments in 2026; once their dates have been finalised, we will advise you as part of our job is to get as many of you as possible playing and enjoying these events. Please let us know of any other 2026 open African tournaments planned.

Several more South African bridge clubs are trialling the BriAn scoring app including a Cape Town club set up for advanced beginners. We've been impressed at how quickly the organisers and players at these clubs have adapted, with the results uploaded to Pianola and distributed to players by E-mail. The Calendar on the BfA website has been updated to comprehend the sessions organised by these and the other 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 October 2025: Judith Marigny (BfA BBO); Rose Hampton (Constantina Monday); Judy Rothschild (Village Monday); Maureen Kilcullen (Village Thursday); Anne Demattais & June Bartlett (Constantiaberg); Betty Hall & Colette Powell (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Johan Bouwer (Le Domaine Friday A); Piet Strauss & June Rowan (Le Domaine Friday B); Stephen Guinsberg (Constantina Friday); Julie Cotton (HDBC); Ros Hulley-Miller (Lowveld); Nikki Wentzel (Simbithi); Tessa Schreuder (Tokai Estate); Toni Ponting & Ros Hulley-Miller (Bateleur); Peter Isherwood (Stables); Sue & Anthony Goldstein (Hout Bay); Wendy Nalson & Patty Thompson (Dragonfly); and Ricky Selles & Nan Forrest (Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge). Well done to all of them! 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.

You can click here to view the results of the third round of the 2025/2026 Buccaneer League matches as well as the log positions. At this point the Pinelands 1A team lead League 1 despite a defeat by the Hermanus 1 team while the Bidding Box 2 team continue to lead League 2.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from Jeff Sapire, a multiple South African Champion, who has represented South Africa many times in international tournaments and now teaches classes, runs workshops, and plays ‘pro’ bridge online: For those who use Keycard Blackwood (really a MUST if you want to reach good slams, and avoid bad ones): for a small slam, assuming you have a fit, and more or less enough points, you need either ALL 5 key cards OR 4 key cards PLUS the trump queen. You can also use the ever-growing bridge tips page on our website to further improve your bridge.

Looking at the future, everywhere AI companions are becoming the rage, taking the place of humans in people's lonely lives. So I wondered what it would be like if BBO replaced their robots with AI bridge companions? For starters they would have names and genial personalities so that, as you logged on, your device would say "Good morning, Mary, are you playing with James again today?". And while you waited for the session to start you would conduct an inane conversation during which AI companion James would say things like "How's your shoulder today, Mary? Hope you don't have to have an operation like Doreen did last week" or "that aggressive Wilson is playing again today so remember to double if he goes too high" or "congratulations again on that slam you made on hand 13 yesterday" or even "remember 2NT is a Jacoby response". At the end of each round James would praise you "well done on holding up that ace three times" or gently chide you "it's a pity you never got to read that BfA bridge tip about not finessing on the opening lead". Before too long you would - like those little old ladies monopolising the slot machines at Sun City - become addicted to playing morning, noon and night with best bridge buddy James and your friends back at the club would become forgotten. After all, they never asked endlessly after your latest grandchild or remembered your brilliance on yesterday's hand 13.

You can click here for a summary of good bridge etiquette - maybe it should be retitled the guide to being the perfect human bridge companion - which even the hoary players amongst us should skim through if only to remind ourselves of the bad bridge habits we have picked up along the way - and should drop forthwith as a courtesy to our fellow players! One item omitted from that summary is an exhortation to players, usually playing EW, to diligently check names and scores entered into BriAn or Bridgemates. It's no good complaining to the TD long after the scores have been published that hand 5 was played by N and not E and made 10 tricks and not 7. As an aside, loneliness is increasingly being seen as the scourge of our modern AI assisted society with American deaths due to loneliness rising rapidly while, in Poland, it is cited as one of the main reasons the country has one of the world's lowest birthrates with screen-besotted young people having fewer occasions to physically meet and mate. Maybe face to face bridge needs to ride to the rescue?

Turning to the more mundane BfA statistics where we are seeing growth, during the past 30 days our 15 member clubs recorded the results of 640 (up 17% from September's 545) tables of bridge on Pianola; 1,218 unlonely 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 2,280 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 10,942 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 October 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.