The 9 High Corwen is a new EBU competition for non-expert pairs and we are keen to support this. Provided we get enough interest we plan to hold a standard pairs competition of about 18-20 boards online on Realbridge on the evening of Thursday 27^th March & the top three pairs from this event will have the chance to represent our county in the final which will be held online on 31^st May. More information about this competition can be found at:

https://www.ebu.co.uk/competitions/nine-high-corwen

We will shortly be contacting the best scoring eligible pairs playing in our affiliated clubs during the first 2 weeks of February to invite them to take part in qualifier on 27^th March. This is a good opportunity to play against others of a similar standard from clubs elsewhere in the county & beyond without any experts to contend with! To be eligible to take part you need to have an NGS grade of 9 or below on 1/1/25. If you are unsure what this is or what your grade is do not worry – just email the county organiser and all can be explained! Similarly, if you are unsure about playing on Realbridge, we can help with this also.  Please consider taking part as we want this to be successful. There will be no fees to enter the qualifying competition & the county will pay the entry costs for anyone representing us in the final.

For any queries or for more information please contact Chris Raymond – drcjr56@gmail.com

Both our teams scored well in the final round of this competition which was held on Saturday 19th October.  

Despite missing several regular pairs, the A team finished first on the day winning 2 from 3 matches & only just losing to Lancashire. The performance was anchored by Chris Pope & Andy Prothero who were in top position on X-imps for the entire session.  The C team also finished top winning every match with Bernard Kaye & Bob Mitchell top overall on X-imps. 

Over all four rounds, both teams finished in 2nd place behind Yorkshire. To check the detailed cumulative scores visit: http://www.manchesterbridge.org.uk/NBL/r2024.html

Congratulations and thanks to all for taking part and supporting our county teams. 

The Tollemache Cup is the prestigious inter-county teams of 8 competition for England & Wales which invariably involves many of the very strongest players in the UK. Merseyside & Cheshire last won this event  back in 1993 & the qualifying round for this season’s trophy took place on 9^th / 10^th Nov. Our team had mixed results on day 1 though still managed to win  5/8 matches & with a strong finish ended the day in equal 4th place. All pairs were +ve on X-IMPs with Paddy Murphy & Tracy Sherman near the top of the leader board.

Day 2 followed a similar pattern of mixed results but our team were still in contention for a place in the final going into the last round. Sadly, we only managed a draw in our last match against a strong London team and other results did not go our way so we missed out on going through to the final next year by the narrow margin of 3 VPs. Paddy & Tracy were again our best pair on X-IMPs.

Thanks to all for taking part and supporting our county & particularly to John Hampson for acting as team manager.