BfA March 2025 Newsletter Highlights: Schedule / Results / Education / Laws / Statistics

As a result of overwhelming demand, entries for the 2025 Hermanus Pairs Tournament had to close early; the tournament results will be published on the BfA website soon after close of play next Saturday. The next tournament, organised by Cape Town's Bidding Box Bridge Club, is a pairs tournament taking place on Sunday 18th May; you can click here for more details. The ever-popular Bedford teams tournament is tentatively scheduled for the weekend of 27th September. Please note that these tournaments are open to all players and none requires that entrants be members of the SABF or any other union. If you know of any other open bridge tournaments, including charity events, taking place anywhere in Africa in the months ahead, please send me details so we can publicise them and so swell the turnout.

During March the Gibbons of Le Domaine Bridge Club trained the organisers of a Ballito Bridge Club in the use of the BriAn scoring app which they then successfully used to score their next club session. As we have mentioned before, the BriAn cell phone app provides small clubs without BridgeMates with a sophisticated scoring system, though prior training is essential for the club organisers - who then benefit hugely by not having to spend hours after every session interpreting the scrawl on paper travelers.

The results from all BfA club sessions, face to face and online, are posted on our Pianola website and can be accessed by clicking on the Results menu item. You can click here to view the March 2025 Buccaneer Teams Competition results and log which shows the Pinelands 1A team still leading League 1 and the Peninsula team League 2. Bidding Box 3 lead League 3 and South Cape League 4. Soon clubs will be invited to enter the 2025/26 Buccaneer competition.

Congratulations to the following players for achieving the best average in 3+ sessions at their club during March 2025: Andre Wagenaar (BfA BBO); Cathy Robinson and Mary Boshard (Constantina Monday); Anthony Goldstein (Village Monday); Gerard Verhoog (Village Thursday); Tony Greenwood (Constantiaberg); Richard Moore and Dino Zolezzi (Le Domaine Thursday RealBridge); Dino Zolezzi and Betty Hall (Le Domaine Friday A); Tessa White (Le Domaine Friday B); Doreen Dawson (Constantina Friday); Ian Glenn (Hermanus Duplicate Bridge Club); Kallie Maw (Tokai Estate) and Clyde Mallinson (BfA / Le Domaine Saturday RealBridge Pairs). Well done to all of them! And especially nice to see new names popping up each month. 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 on hand upgrading from top bridge teacher Jeff Sapire: A response at the 2 level (playing Standard American); 1H-2C etc, should have 10+pts, NOT 7 or 8. But with 9pts and a fair 6 card suit, treat is as 10pts and bid at the 2 level. e.g. 1S-? xx Kxx AQxxxx xx bid 2D. We have been heartened by the number of positive comments we have received from players re the usefulness of the bridge tips contained in our results E-mails and on the Bridge Tips page, now one of the most popular on the BfA website (along with our Learn Bridge page), especially now that you can download a printable PDF listing all the tips published to date. Maybe that's one reason why our sessions have seemed much more competitive of late?

In our last two newsletters we summarised the procedure to be followed when there is an insufficient bid or a lead out of turn. This month we look at what happens after a revoke. When you read the text version on the TD Corner of the BfA website, you'll think it's massively complicated but, fortunately for us, New Zealand Bridge has produced a flowchart which sets it out so succinctly you could store it on your phone for instant reference at the club. The only difficult part is determining if the revoke has been "established" which shouldn't be too difficult for a logical bridge player like you!

Scotland's Stirling University has announced funding, partially provided by the World Bridge Federation, to pursue studies towards a PhD in Bridge as a Mindsport, focusing on bridge as an educational tool in schools. International students are also welcome to apply, but must be willing to move to central Scotland if successful. You can click here for more details. (You will be pleased to note that knowledge of all the BfA Bridge tips is not a pre-requisite!).

Turning to BfA statistics, during the past 30 days our member clubs recorded the results of 416 tables of bridge on Pianola; more than 900 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 1,700+ players, mostly on the mailing lists of BfA member clubs, in our Pianola player database to assist them to play more and better bridge. The Google map of African bridge clubs has been viewed 8,323 (up from 8,044 at end February) times since it was created.

This is the thirteenth newsletter of the now one year old Bridge for Africa, 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.