Bridge for Africa (BfA) August 2025 Newsletter Highlights: Schedule / Bridge Clubs / Results / Education / Laws / Statistics

You will be absolutely delighted / bitterly disappointed to hear that the ever-popular Bedford teams tournament, scheduled for the weekend of 26th September 2025, was oversubscribed so entries have closed with 16 teams from around the country taking part. If you know of any other bridge events, including charity tournaments, taking place anywhere in Africa in the months ahead, please send me details so we can publicise them and so swell the turnout.

Two more clubs, one in Cape Town and the other in Northern KZN, are starting to use the BriAn cellphone scoring app, bringing to thirteen the number of clubs using BriAn under the aegis of BfA. The results of the sessions run at all these clubs are now uploaded to Pianola and can be accessed via the BfA website. This week we are sending an E-mail to all our regular players who have not yet registered on Pianola with instructions on how to do so so they can analyse their performance and, hopefully, improve their bridge and their partnership systems.

The results of the three weekly face to face sessions run by the Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club (HDBC) are also uploaded to Pianola, along with the results from our three weekly online sessions: Tuesdays at 14h00 on BBO - you can find these by logging on to BBO and selecting Competitive, All tournaments, and entering BfA in the Search bar - and on Thursdays at 09h00 and Saturdays at 14h00 on RealBridge for both of which you need to contact Rod beforehand on 079 673 5077. 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 June 2025: David and Jennie Boyes (BfA BBO); Cathy Robinson and Mary Boshard (Constantina Monday); Howard Strauss and Peter Terblanche (Village Monday); Eileen and Paul Mestern (Village Thursday); Anne Dematteis and June Bartlett (Constantiaberg); Richard Moore and Dino Zolezzi (Le Domaine Thursday and Saturday RealBridge); Nanette Clouston and Sandy Condotti (Le Domaine Friday A); Val Willemse and Julie Coulson (Le Domaine Friday B); the lovely Katinka Steere (Constantina Friday); Rita Raubenheimer (HDBC); Paul Kloeck (Lowveld); Zel Davidson and Sandy Miller (Simbithi); Tokai Estate (Annie Campbell); and Carina Wiid and Frans Schutte (Bateleur). 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.

During August the 2025/2026 season of the Buccaneer league got off to a smooth but very competitive start. You can click here to view the results of and log after the first round.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from top bridge teacher Jeff Sapire: Overcalls at the 3 level: It’s highly recommended that you have a minimum opening hand at least, with a 6 card suit (never 5) with 2 of the top 4 honours. (2S) 3D on xxx Ax KQxxxx Kx - with xxx Axx AKJxx Qx don’t even think about it. You can use the ever-growing bridge tips page on our website to further improve your bridge - and thank you to those of you who have given feedback on the tips (all positive so far) and suggested additional tips, helping us to all improve our bridge skills together.

The latest Scottish Bridge Union (SBU) newsletter contains an amusing story about how the TD penalised dummy one trick for revoking in a major competition recently. The contract was 4S, West led a small club and dummy was tabled with a singleton 5H. East won the AC and returned a heart won by West, who, given the singleton heart in dummy, did not pursue that suit. Later it was found that dummy only showed 12 cards; the JH had been hidden behind one of the spades. Dummy was penalised for not being more careful in tabling the hand.

The SBU article went on to summarise dummy's do's and don'ts, two of which all our players should note. If Declarer specifies a suit to be played from dummy but not a rank, then the lowest card in the suit must be silently and smoothly played by Dummy - no delays, hovering hand or raised eyebrow - or, if Declarer specifies a rank or something vague like "next one" but not a suit, the previous suit should be continued if possible. Secondly, after declarer has played a card or designated a card in dummy to be played, dummy is NOT allowed to point out that the card was played from the wrong hand; Dummy can remind Declarer which hand PRIOR to a card being played or designated, but not after. This is a clear example of where Dummy can try to prevent an irregularity but may not draw attention to an irregularity once it has occurred. An extract from Law 55 DECLARER’S LEAD OUT OF TURN “If declarer has led out of turn from hand or from dummy, then either defender may accept the lead ... or require its retraction... If the defenders choose differently the option expressed by the player next in turn to the irregular lead shall prevail.”

Turning to BfA statistics, during the past 30 days our member clubs recorded the results of 563 (up from 522) tables of bridge on Pianola; 1,157 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 2,135 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 10,515 times since it was created. Apart from the Home Page, the most popular pages on the BfA website in August were 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.

As usual we look forward to your comments and feedback. 

We look forward to seeing you playing at our clubs and in our online sessions during September.