July 2010
Welcome Heritage Coast – Suffolk's Newest Club
Heritage Coast Bridge Club joined the EBU and Suffolk in June. The club meets at the Community Centre, Leiston (King George's Avenue, IP16 4JX, opposite Sylvester Rd.) and plays on Wednesdays at 1:15pm. They welcome visitors and can arrange partners – see our club pages or the Heritage Coast website.
So how many members does Suffolk have?
Hearing the membership secretary answer this seemingly innocuous question is a little like listening to a politician evading a Paxman interrogation on Newsnight. Absolute truth is hard to come by but he does answer the important one; "who wins the wine?" – the competition to guess the membership posed in April.
Fran Moor who plays at Deben was closest to 835, the total on July 1st.
The EBU is still sorting out duplicates and other oddities. One Suffolk club has to overcome technical difficulties with submitting data. We are delighted to welcome Heritage Coast above but they were unlikely to be in many entrant's reckonings. So don't be too hard on yourself if your guess was wide of the mark.
Membership is changing: new players continue to join clubs, others who moved away years ago have reset their allegiance. Currently we're writing to inactive players whose 'grace period' expires at the end of this month. The dust is yet to settle but as of writing, we have 842, 3 juniors and 11 through the Bridge for All scheme.
Bridge in the Cupboard
Arch-rationalist and debunker of false claims, 'Idnar', five of clubs, conjures up a trick of his own.
If you are new to the series or have missed one, catch up at the index of all the tales.
Forthcoming Events
Suffolk Seniors' Pairs
Wednesday 21st July 2010, 7:15pm at Clare. A one session pairs event for partners both of whom must be aged at least 55. There is an embedded event, for Veterans where each player must be at least 70.
The venue is Clare club which meets in the Old School – details from the Suffolk club pages. The cost is is £4.00 per person but Clare members enjoy a discount of a pound. Entries and enquiries to Competitions Secretary, (01379 870291).
Felixstowe Congress – advance notice
Keep the dates; this year the Felixstowe Congress will be over the weekend of 2nd/3rd October.
The full congress will cost £35 and there will be a prize fund of £1500. Both the Saturday Championship Pairs and the Sunday Swiss teams are Green-pointed
More details will follow but congress secretary, (01206 861729) will answer any questions you have.
Provisional Calendar for 2010
This year's initiative to involve clubs in county events has slightly delayed the production of the calendar. Aside from the events above, these are the confirmed dates for the remainder of 2010.
| 15-Sep-2010 | 7:15pm | Men's & Women's Pairs | Ipswich Bowls Club |
| October-2010 | Championship Pairs Heats | Clubs | |
| 31-Oct-2010 | 11:00am | Club Teams of Eight | Woodbridge |
| 7-Nov-2010 | 2:00pm | Novice pairs | Risbygate |
| 22-Nov-2010 | (Week of) | Suffolk Simultaneous Pairs | Clubs |
| 5-Dec-2010 | 2:00pm | Championship Teams of Four | Ipswich Bowls Club |
Competition Brochure
Those of you who were members last year might be expecting the Competition Brochure. Indeed, though the printing and distribution was markedly more expensive, we had hoped to do one last edition. But it was always tight to collect all the details for the start of the playing season and this year has made more complicated by the new arrangements mentioned earlier. So, sadly, we have to announce there will be no 2010-11 brochure.
We will be publicising via the website and circulating to clubs a 'Wall-chart' of Suffolk events – once they are confirmed. The full programme will appear in the autumn Table Talk.
Club Director Training Courses
Norfolk are running Club Director Courses at Wymondham:
- Book rulings and basic essentials — 4th September
- Judgement rulings — 16th October
- Assessment — 30th October (provisional, venue to be announced)
Note changes to latter two dates.
Costs are £40, £40 and £45 respectively. All bookings should be made to the EBU. Part of the rationale of the booking directly is because there is a discount for multiple attendees: the following is an extract from the EBU web-page, http://www.ebu.co.uk/lawsandethics/td-training/.
Under the Universal Membership scheme affiliated clubs are invited to send a second club member to a TD course FREE OF CHARGE where the club sends a full paying member to any of the club TD courses.
Results
2010 World Wide Bridge Contest
Stowmarket ran a heat in this, the World's largest event. Jan Wynne & Bogdan Talaga won and their 63.32% in the overall percentages ranked them 173rd out of the 4741 pairs from 272 clubs in 32 countries that took part. Nationally, their score was 29th.
Full results are on the ECats site for the event.
Suffolk Married Pairs – Lang Cup
Congratulations to Andrew and Jane Moore who retained the Lang Cup for Married Pairs. This furthers their remarkable run of six wins in the last eight years (missing out only in 2004 and 2008).
| 1. | Andrew Moore & Jane Moore | 61.81% |
| 2. | Alan Green & Elaine Green | 59.72% |
| 3= | John Heath & Maureen Heath | 57.29% |
| 3= | David Price & Jenny Price | 57.29% |
14 pairs took part, full results on the Suffolk website.
Garden Cities
Colchester represented Suffolk in the Garden Cities regional finals in Peterborough. However this event continues to be a bugbear for the county and Colchester did not manage to reverse the trend. The EBU have the full results.
Pachabo Cup
Suffolk failed to improve on their high finish of 2009 in this year's Pachabo – the county 'Champion's Cup'. Peter Gemmell, Peter Sutcliffe, Jim Gobert and Chris Chambers who represented the county finished mid-table. The EBU site has the full results.