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

Mid-April marked two short years since BfA unexpectedly burst onto the African bridge scene where it now forms probably the largest association of bridge players on the continent thanks to the more than 20 South African clubs now using the low cost, Internet-based services BfA provides - and that's not counting the four Somerset West bridge clubs which last week started trying BriAn and Pianola. We look forward to seeing even more (South) African bridge clubs, large and small, following suit as part of improving their bridge and reducing the hassle and cost of bridge club administration!

Cape Town's Village Bridge Club invites local players to the Premiere of the La Cuccina Bridge Fiesta/Feast @ The Baxter on Sunday 17 May 2026 (9h00 for 09h30 to 15h00); you can click here for more details or Whatsapp Graham Spolander +27 65 893 6215 for more information and to enter. If it's a success, Village has plans to organize similar Sunday tournaments at the Baxter Theatre Restaurant at regular intervals.

The Bedford Bridge Tournament is 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 also have the option of online bridge. BfA's BBO team organises Tuesday afternoon BBO tournaments at 14h00 open to players at all BfA clubs and beyond. To play in either 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. The R 30 a head (note change) BfA RealBridge sessions organised by Le Domaine on Thursday and Saturday afternoons are also seeing increased interest; contact Rod (079 673 5077) or Louise (082 577 9942) ahead of time to play.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during April: Anne Demattais (Constantina Monday); Sally Nienaber (Village Monday); Brian Paxton (Village Thursday); Craig & Brian Paxton (Constantiaberg); Bridie Bullen-Smith & Neville Mitchell (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Nanette Clouston (Le Domaine Friday A); Carole & Jack Domisse (Le Domaine Friday B); Ashleigh Vergunst (Constantina Friday); Carren Emary (HDBC); Paul Kloeck (Lowveld); Zel Davidson (Simbithi); Michelle Godfrey (Steenberg); Margo Lilley & Nan Meyer (Bateleur); Peter Isherwood (Stables); Jill Leslie (Hout Bay); Pam Caldwell (Tokai Estate); Rina Kalac & Shirley Mills (Bergvliet); Anita Klintworth (Dragon Fly); Mignon Leigh (Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge); Angela & Peter van Lienden (Great Oaks); and Jean Jordaan (BfA BBO). It's nice to see new names - and new clubs - appearing each month.

The 2025/2026 season of the Buccaneer league is entering the final stretch; you can click here to view the results of and log after the April round 8 matches. At the top of League 1, the Hermanus 1 team has edged ahead of the Fish Hoek 1 and Pinelands 1A teams while the Bidding Box 2, South Cape and Table View teams continue to be well ahead in the other three leagues.

Congratulations to all the foreign players who swept the boards at the recent South African Congress Tournament depriving South Africa's best players of all the podium positions in the pairs and teams competitions. The only exception was the mixed pairs where Alon Apteker - whom many of you encountered at the Hermanus Pairs tournament last month - won partnering England international Natalie Hoff, with Alain and Christina Audiche from Egypt runners up.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from Jeff Sapire, a leading South African player and teacher, on Splitting honours: Normally one plays 2nd hand low, but with touching honours, KQ or QJ you may need to split them to ensure a trick. Declarer leads low from hand and you have QJx and dummy has A10x - if you play low declarer MAY decide to play the 10, and if they have the king in hand they will make 3 tricks. So split and play the jack, forcing dummy to win the ace, and so creating a trick for yourself. The Bridge Tips page on the Bridge for Africa website provides plenty more to furnish your bridge armoury.

In our March newsletter I mentioned the origins of the names of several well-known conventions, some of which were sadly not named after the player who invented them. Another example is the Stayman Convention we all use which is named for the well known - in the 1940's anyway - Sam Stayman. In fact the 2C conventional response to 1NT was invented in America by George Rapée and first described by Sam in an article he published in Bridge World in June 1945 following which it was given the Stayman designation. Meanwhile back in 1939 J. C. H. Marx invented a similar convention in England but the advent of the Second World War delayed his announcement so maybe we should consider renaming it the Marx Convention. Mind you, I doubt Karl Marx would have liked capitalist bridge players referring to the Puppet Marx Convention.

The results of all the face to face and online sessions run by BfA clubs are uploaded to Pianola, which sends a personalised results E-mail to each player (please let me know if you don't receive these). Each results E-mail contains a View Full Results link to a page on the BfA website showing all the pairs and their results for the session. From this page you can click on your pair name to view your results on each board or you can click on the Travelers link towards the top of the screen to see what happened on each board at each table where it was played. Learning from your mistakes and other players' brilliance is one of the best ways to improve your bridge!

Turning to the monthly BfA statistics which gives 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 672 tables of bridge on Pianola; 1,582 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 2,820 players in our Pianola player database to assist them to play more and better bridge.

Google Analytics, the software that monitors the usage of websites, recorded that the most popular pages on the BfA website in April 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 April was lower than in March as all the Chinese, Singaporean and Nigerian visitors mysteriously dried up leaving mostly South Africans. The Google map of African bridge clubs has been viewed 13,527 times since it was created to help players to find new places to play.