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

The ever-popular Bedford teams tournament is scheduled for the weekend of 26th September 2025; you can click here to view the details. 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.

There have been some additions and changes to our map of African bridge clubs as well as to our African bridge calendar. The Hout Bay club in Cape Town and the Stables Bridge Club in Ballito have both started using the BriAn app to score their bridge sessions. Any other clubs interested in using this wonderful app should contact me.

Our August online bridge schedule comprises three sessions a week: 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!

Congratulations to the winners of two very successful charity bridge tournaments that have taken place since our last newsletter. Sue Botha and Tony Popplestone were the winners and Erna Swart and Judy Rothschild the runners up in the competitive section of the Paul Mestern Pairs Trophy charity event which raised R 160,000 for the Reach for Recovery breast cancer support charity; major sponsors were Crazy Stores and Personal Trust. The winners of the Sandbaai Bridge Bash, a charity event supporting The Learning Hub, were Elsabe Ketteringham and Lulu Kemp. It's truly wonderful that bridge players are able to make a difference while at the same time enjoying playing their favourite game - talk about multitasking!

The results from all BfA club sessions, both face to face and online, are posted on our Pianola website and can be accessed by clicking on the Results menu item. Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during June 2025: Ilse Smart and Carren Emary (BfA BBO); Eila Steyl (Constantina Monday); Peter Terblanche and Selwyn Gersowsky (Village Thursday); Jan Chrobok and Malcolm Felgate (Constantiaberg); Dino Zolezzi and Richard Moore (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Dave and Louise Gibbon (Le Domaine Friday A); Leigh and Trevor Dunsdon (Le Domaine Friday B); Katinka Steere (Constantina Friday); and Rita Raubenheimer (Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club). 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. We plan to announce winners from more clubs in future newsletters.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from top bridge teacher Jeff Sapire: As a defender, don’t hold up until you have a singleton Ace of trumps. Say you have Axx and declarer plays trumps. You can hold up once (unless it’s urgent to win and do something else), but NEVER hold up again, because if you leave yourself with the bare ace, if this is the last trump, declarer won’t bother to draw it. But if you take the second round, then declarer will be in the position where s/he may have to waste two trumps to draw your little one, or else not draw it. You can use the bridge tips page on our website to further improve your bridge.

Moving onto the laws, when giving explanations, players should avoid such words as “Natural" or "Standard” as they mean different things to different players; on the TD Corner Page are some brief guidelines on how to communicate effectively, especially when answering queries from your opponents about meanings of bids and plays as well as useful guidelines for TDs on how to cope with slow play. These documents are also available from the TD Corner page of our website. You can click here to view the revised English Bridge Union White Book of laws, which became effective on 1st August 2025.

Turning to BfA statistics, during the past 30 days our member clubs recorded the results of 522 tables of bridge on Pianola; 1,108 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 2,085 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 10,132 times since it was created. Apart from the Home Page, the most popular pages on the BfA website in June were the Results, News, TD Corner 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 and Kwa-Zulu Natal 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.