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

The ever-popular Bedford teams tournament is scheduled for the weekend of 26th September 2025; full details will be available in July.  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 Gordon’s Bay Bridge Club has relocated and now plays at the Helderberg Bowls Club, 188 Main Road, Somerset West on Thursday afternoons at 13h00 (Contact: Debi Balladon 072 425-9292). Up on KwaZulu Natal North Coast, the Simbi Bridge Club, which meets in the Dragon Room at Simbithi on Mondays at 13h00 (Contact: Jody Feuilarade 082 851-4836) has started using the BriAn app to score their sessions, as has the club at nearby Ballito (Contact: Alix Cheshire ([email protected]) or Allison Tatham (082 411-3619)). Also now using BriAn are the three Lowveld clubs between White River and Nelspruit in Mpumulanga (Contact: Maralyn Robinson 083 263-3490). New players, including holiday makers at these popular tourist spots, are welcome to join the sessions. We are expecting the Hout Bay club and another on the KZN north coast to start using BriAn in July.

You can click here to view the June 2025 Buccaneer Teams Competition results and the final log which shows the Pinelands 1A team winning League 1 and Hermanus winning an extremely tight race in League 2. Bidding Box 3 won League 3 and South Cape League 4. Congratulations to all the winners and a big thank you to all the players who participated, as well as to Jan Chrobok for his selfless dedication to this swashbuckling competition. Clubs across the region are invited to enter the 2025/26 Buccaneer teams competition - there is no entry fee - which starts in July; just contact Jan (+27 82 650-4809) for details.

Our July 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!

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: David and Jennie Boyes (BfA BBO); Paul Reynolds (Constantina Monday); Di Westcott (Village Monday); Mark Kenyon (Village Thursday); Stephen Guinsberg (Constantiaberg); Dino Zolezzi and Richard Moore (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Colin and Lorraine Field (Le Domaine Friday A); Linda Lilly and Lynsay Field (Le Domaine Friday B); Geoff Klemperer (Constantina Friday); Julie Cotton (Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club); Annie Campbell (Tokai Estate) and Dino Zolezzi (BfA / 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.

Moving to upgrading your bridge skills, here is this month's mini-lesson from top bridge teacher Jeff Sapire: When partner opens 2NT (20-22), the magic number for responder to continue is 4 points. You may be a point short, but the odds are with you. It’s fair to say that making 3NT with such a minimum can sometimes be difficult, because dummy has little in the way of entries; but you must go for it. If your opening 2NT is 20-21, then it’s closer, but you must still go to game. On the popular Bridge Tips page and downloadable PDF on the BfA website, we have now created separate sections for tips related to competitive, pre-emptive and slam bidding as the list of bidding tips was getting unmanageable.

The dark nights of midwinter, now upon us, are the perfect time to invite friends around for a team of four competition in front of the fire, interspersed with a hearty dinner to warm the soul. Click here for a PDF file containing instructions and score sheets for the evening's entertainment as well as for a weekend tournament where everyone gets to partner everyone else. And, in case you are stumped for what to serve, we have even included a recipe or two. As you head out into the dark to play, you will be heartened to hear that BBC presenter Claudia Winkleman, the co-host of Strictly Come Dancing, in her book Quite talks about Bridge being 'the sexiest thing you can do on a night out'. There you go!

In our recent newsletters we summarised the procedures to be followed when a common rules infringement takes place. This month we look at the lead restrictions imposed when a bid is withdrawn and once again New Zealand Bridge has produced a flowchart which can be accessed from the TD Corner page of the BfA website. You can also click here to access a page on the English Bridge Union (EBU) website which, in turn, provides links to training videos for Tournament Directors which are very informative and can be referenced at your leisure.

Turning to BfA statistics, during the past 30 days our member clubs recorded the results of 550 tables of bridge on Pianola; 1077 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 2,030 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 9,282 times since it was created. Apart from the Home Page, the most popular pages on the BfA website in June 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 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.

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 July