The last Club Night duplicate pairs for 2024 will take place on Tuesday, 17th December. The first Club Night for 2025 will be on Tuesday, 21st January. There are no other events taking place in the Pavilion until that week.

Following the success of an MCC team in the RAC's Centenary Cup earlier this year, Paul Filer and Simon Alterman won the RAC's Bowman Championship Pairs competition on 27th October. The all-day event with a total of 46 boards was in two sessions using Swiss format scoring.

Runners-up in the event were Geoff Lane and Pralab Barua, last year's winners, who won the morning session. But the trophy, presented by Michael Bailey (of RAC and MCC), went to Paul and Simon as the best of the 24 pairs throughout the day.

Congratulations to Pat & Martin Brand, winners of the 2024 Rubber Bridge competition, who beat Barrie Gilbert and Steve Foster in the final. The losing semi-finalists were last year's champions, David Alterman & Miles Golding, and last year's runners-up, Sonel Mehta & Yong Choong. Pat and Martin are the holders of the Brian Silverstone Trophy.

The plate competition for those who finished third and fourth in the group stages was won by Geoff Lane and Pralab Barua, who meet Steve Bispham and David Cock in the final. You can see the results of all the matches, the league standings, and progress in the knock-out rounds here. 

After two wins, MCC suffered its first defeat of the season at the hands of Cumberland. The hosts were leading by 8 imps at half time and, after an excellent dinner in the newly refurbished room at the top of the clubhouse, Cumberland stretched their advantage to claim victory by 28 imps. Captain Mike Alsford managed to set aside his loyalty to MCC for this one evening, captaining the home team to victory.

We held our Mixed Swiss teams in the Long Room at Lords on Sunday 13^th October, with 30 teams of four playing 42 boards. The competition was won by Dafydd & Tessa Jones, Gareth Birdsall and Sonia Zakrzewski with 90 victory points, in second place was team Foley (G Foley, S Obart, I Fine and N Clayton) with 84. A very enjoyable day was had by all, brilliantly directed by Victor Lesk and Rob Sassoon.  

The committee have had many representations as to the format of the master point trophy. At present the best scores up to a maximum of 6 are taken for any pairing. This allows pairs to keep playing until they have had 6 maximum scores. From the 1^st October 2024 we are going to tweak this a bit. For the 2024/25 season, only the first six scores with any other member/candidate will count. This hopefully means that there will be many more different pairings and make the competition a bit more exciting.

The MCC team secured a resounding victory in the 2024 Centenary Cup competition held at the RAC in Pall Mall on 20th May. MCC ran out clear winners with a score of +112 IMPs, with runners-up RAC Woodcote Park at +64 IMPs.

Full results of the event are available here. 

The MCC team of eight, pictured L-R with the trophy: Richard Cumming-Bruce, Lester Pereira, Gary Diamond, Russell Tenzer (Captain), John Pemberton, Mike Alsford, Pralab Barua, and Nigel Clayton.

MCC Members or Candidates for membership can sign up to receive emails about Bridge Society activities from the Club and from committee members organising events. You can access the form here

For those of you who enjoy playing Bridge on line Dominic Flint is keen to reach out to those interested in representing the club. Currently he is on the hunt for opposition near and far with games against Hurlingham, the North of England and on the other side of the Atlantic. To register your interest complete the form