The January Bridge Challenge will be held on Level 17, 501 Bourke Street on 20 January 2025.

Details and the Booking Form can be found here 

The 2024 Christmas breakup session was held on 18 December on Level 17 of the RACV City Club.

Bridge was played in the morning with an excellent turnout of 25 tables in two sections.  Results can be seen here.

A pre-lunch drink was served in th lift foyer, then we returned to a festive lunch.  Our President, Ronella Stuart, opened proceedings with a welcome speech. She then took the opportunity to present a gift of appreciation to the RACV Club  Member Coordinator, Robert Chambers, recognising his efforts during the year to make bridge "easy" for us to enjoy. 

After lunch our Director, Ben Kingham, reflected on the year, and made mention of some of the Bridge Club stalwarts, who sail under the radar but are able to help and advise as needed.  Ben also made special mention of Willie Moulton who has travelled from Sale (3 hours each way) every Wednesday to attend the Beginners+ Session. 

Ronella thanked Ben for his efforts for the year, and presented him with a mystery envelope.

Awards were presented to:

• Trefor Morgan, the winner of the Patricia Snowden Memorial Cup
• Bob Jacobs, the winner of the Sam Ball Award
• Alison and Paul Baker, Most Improved Players for the year
• Jo and Murray Linfoot for the highest score at Monday Supervised Bridge
• Ramona and John Enconniere for the highest score at Wednesday Duplicate Bridge.

Award details and photos can be seen here.

And a random group having a good time. 

Changes to processes by the Bridge Club Committee
The Committee has made the following changes in August 2024

Changes to the Partnership Service
The current partnership service has been a very successful and much appreciated component of our Bridge Club for the past 10 years. It was put in place during a cultural change in our club when a non-playing director was appointed, which identified the need to support players without partners. The changes to the partnership service are being made in order to make more effective use of Bridgewebs, and you will be aware of the many changes and updates that have been implemented in recent weeks to this site.

The committee is pleased to announce the enhancements and changes to how you may go about requesting a partner: See below:

•          You may have noticed on our Bridgewebs site a new page under Bookings - now titled “Request a Partner”.  This is the “Self Help” option. Here you check if someone has advised their availability for a specific date and session.  If they have, and you are interested, then you can contact them directly using the information supplied in the contact field.  If there isn’t anyone available, then you can advertise your availability by filing out the form.  Please note the information entered is “public”.

•          If you prefer not to have your contact details in the public domain, then you can continue to use email, but please note we now have a new, dedicated email address for this service, which is: partnership@racvbridge.au  

Changes to the Bridge Club Group email
As you know the Bridge Club has used the racvbridge.au@gmail.com email address to send announcements, newsletters and bulletins to all Bridge Club members.  However, many of you may not be aware that there have been issues primarily  - sending group emails with attachments, especially to Bigpond addresses and others as well.

We have researched options and believe we will get a much better result using a commercial mail sender.  There are many available, all vying for the bulk email marketing campaign market.  The best known of these is MailChimp.  These companies are targeting 500,000 or more emails in a campaign - we only need to send about 150 each time

The Committee, based on the Webmaster’s recommendation, has selected sender.net to see if we can deliver a better message and content more reliably to more members. 

For you, this means you will receive newsletter emails from “RACV Bridge Club” and a reply-to address of “news@racvbridge.au”.   

To ensure these emails get to your Inbox, we strongly suggest you add this email address to your address book and/or your safe sender list.

We will no longer send attachments.  In the wider world, attachments are a potential means of loading malicious software to your device.  If we need to send a document the email you receive will have a safe link to that document, which will reside on the Club’s Google Drive.

The following clarification on Members introducing guests has been received from

Robert Chambers
Member Engagement Coordinator, RACV Club

Dear RACV Bridge Club,

There have been some questions to the Bridge Committee from Club Members regarding the limiting of non-member guest attendance at Bridge sessions. Previously, a limit has been imposed to ensure that RACV Club members were given priority when Bridge sessions would regularly book out. 

Attendance at Bridge sessions has stabilised over the last two years, and we are now in a position to host Club Members and their guests without restriction. Such a position is not in contravention of the RACV Club’s by-laws in allowing guest attendance without a limit. The appropriate section from the by-laws is included below for reference.

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6.5 Regulation of entry of guests

(a) The names of all guests and the names of Members introducing them shall be recorded in a book kept for that purpose.

(b) A Member may introduce guests in accordance with any restrictions determined by the Club and Membership Committee and notified to Members from time to time.

(c) Members are responsible for the conduct of their guests in Club Premises including any expenses incurred or any damage caused by them.

(d) The RACV Club may refuse to admit any guest without giving any reason.

(e) The RACV Club may suspend or limit the admission of guests to the Club Premises on any occasion or during any hours. 

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