Revised Bridge Schedule 24th July to 2nd August

The Bridge Room will be closed from 24th July to 2nd August in order to construct the new Bar adjacent to the Bridge Room during that period.  

We had originally proposed to cancel the duplicate Bridge sessions during this period, however following a large number of requests to continue with Duplicate sessions we are now proposing to hold Duplicate Bridge for the majority of the times when we would normally have sessions ie on Wednesday 24th July, Monday 29th, Wednesday 31st and Thursday 1st August as follows;

Wednesday 24^th July -            Garden Restaurant TD Steve

Monday      29^th July -             Garden Restaurant TD Steve

Wednesday 31^st July -            Garden Restaurant TD Steve

Thursday    1^st August -          Garden Restaurant TD Gitta

Friday         2^nd August -         Fountain Room -Golf and Bridge

There is however no session scheduled for Thursday 25^th July (no room available).

 As mentioned above, the Golf and Bridge on the 2^nd August will go ahead with the Bridge being in the Fountain Room.

 Niall's lessons on the mornings of Wednesday 24th July and Wednesday 31st will also go ahead in the Garden Restaurant. His Friday morning and Monday evening sessions have now finished for the Summer so are not affected. (Niall is planning to continue his Wednesday morning sessions throughout the Summer with a likely break on 14^th and 21^st August whereas his other sessions will resume in the week of 2^nd September).

Similarly, the last Loulou/Arnold supervised session of this season was last week on Tuesday 16th July, (restarts Tuesday 10th September) so these are not affected either.

 Obviously, there is some inconvenience in moving to a new room. The arrangements being made by staff and the TDs should work well, but cooperation from members to help make things go smoothly will be appreciated.

Bridge Blog – 13th June 2024

Many thanks to Libby for organising the Bridge Summer Party which took place Thursday 6^th June. The weather favoured us, so we were able to enjoy our Pimm’s in the Garden before moving on to a super buffet followed by some Chicago Bridge. It was a very pleasant social event for the Bridge Section. Congratulations to Ellie and Myles for the top score and to Arnold and Loulou for bidding (and making) their slam.

Club Matches

I am happy to report that our teams are continuing to do well in different matches and competitions. The Bridge Room trophy cabinet is now officially full up! We had a convincing win by 81 imps in our home match against Queens Club on 7th May. Congratulations to the team captained by Ron on such a formidable result. Our match on 14th May against the Oxford and Cambridge Club was a much closer affair with Roehampton Club eventually winning by the slender margin of 7 imps. With a large number of relatively flat boards the result was largely decided in the end by Marion Kreiling making a difficult Six Diamonds doubled resulting in a big swing to the good guys.

Competitions

Congratulations to the Lady Golfers team captained by Sandra Fox in retaining the Windmill trophy again this year ahead of Burhill, St Georges Hill, Royal Mid Surrey and Royal Wimbledon. The winning team seems to have involved quite a wide group of players including Viv, Sally, Marion, Loulou, Gunilla. Claire, Wendy, Ellie, Diane, Henryka, Sue Gabriel and Joan. Congratulations also to Belinda Stone and her team for doing really well in the Surrey Tennis League and collecting a trophy, although not quite as the winning team this year. The regulars included Belinda, Val, Sue Norgate and Caroline Jenkins with Henryka, Ron and Kate Blake standing in when others were away. Seemingly very enjoyable and relaxed Bridge for everyone involved. Peter Hardyment and I had a good session at Wimbledon Bridge Club on Sunday 12th May in winning the Mary Edwards Cup. This is the Surrey Pairs competition for winners of the individual club competitions.

Peter and I represented Roehampton Club in place of Peter and Henryka Bonnor-Morris (winners of the 2024 Roehampton Pairs competition) who were abroad at the time. Peter and I were joined by Danny and Sally Gesua last Sunday in representing Roehampton Club in the Surrey Teams competition playing for the Wanborough Cup. Leading after five rounds by a slender margin we dropped heavily after two bad boards but finished a creditable 3rd out of 12 teams against some strong opposition.

Paul Mendelson will be visiting soonish and hopefully joining our duplicate session on 1st July and I am sure quite a few people would like to catch up with him then.

Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair

Wednesday Duplicate 

We decided to change the start date for the Wednesday evening Duplicate session from 7pm to 7.30 pm starting from Wednesday 3rd April. This should give a bit more time for Members to have supper first and also help people to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic. Let’s see how it works out but first indications have been quite positive. 

Booking Classes

Bridge teaching sessions will soon be bookable online via the Club website starting from Monday 22nd April. 

Booking will open six days in advance at 9am. The option to book via Reception will continue, but we believe that most Members will easily adjust to the new online system. 

We are hoping that after the system is running smoothly for booking lessons that it can also be used for some social functions in future. More details on the new system will be available on BridgeWebs. Thanks very much to John Maskell and Club Staff for arranging this helpful development for the Bridge Section. 

Competition results 

The Roehampton Club Teams Trophy was held on Monday 8th April with nine teams competing. Congratulations to Nigel Aspinall, Peter Bonor Morris, Ralph Evers and Ron Wood on a convincing win with a total of 86 imps. 

On 20th March Roehampton Club played an away match against Royal Mid Surrey, finally just winning by 19 imps in a very relaxed and good natured affair. 

Immediately afterwards, on 21st March, a Roehampton Club team played away at the All England and won by 53 imps. The half time score was much closer with Roehampton Club managing a strong second half performance where a slam was bid and made by both our pairs which the opposition over cautiously stayed out of. 

We also played a home match against the MCC on 28th March. It was relatively close with Roehampton Club finally winning by 27 imps. The result was heavily influenced by one board in the second half where a good sacrifice by the Roehampton Club pair rather fortunately turned into a thin game resulting in a double game swing to Roehampton Club. 

There are several upcoming fixtures to look forward to including Queens Club at home on 7th May and the Oxford and Cambridge club at home on 14th May and matches scheduled in June against RAC Woodcote and RAC Pall Mall. 

Many thanks to Nigel for running the Friday teams session twice monthly over the winter season. It was great to see this being so well attended. From May we will switch to the summer programme with the Friday teams moving to the third Friday of the month only. Many thanks also to Maria Wiehe for offering to help run this summer programme once again. 

Bridge Summer Party

Organization for the Bridge Summer Party to be held on Thursday 6th June is now well underway. Hopefully the weather will favour us and we can start with drinks in the garden as usual. Definitely one for the diary … 

Polite reminder 

Finally a small favour to ask … We would be grateful if Members can kindly remember that we agreed to keep food out of the Bridge Room so as to keep the cards and tablecloths as pristine as we can. 

This does also apply to nibbles from the bar (especially as some people have nut allergies). It’s easy to forget, so a gentle reminder in the exceptional case that someone is non-compliant is helpful. 

Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair

Bridge Blog

We have a few changes on the horizon which I am pleased to say have gone down well with members of the Bridge Section.

After sounding out the feelings of the Members who play most actively at the Wednesday sessions, we decided to change the start date for the Wednesday evening Duplicate Bridge from 7pm to 7.30pm. This change will take place from Wednesday 3rd April. Reminders will be posted in due course.

After some discussions with Club Management, we have been able to abolish the charge for the Supervised Play sessions run on Tuesday afternoons by Loulou and Arnold. This brings this session in line with the Duplicate Sessions (which are also no longer charged) and should spread the benefits of the Club’s support to a wider audience.

This policy took place with effect from and including Tuesday 5th March and represents another generous offer from the Club to support the Bridge Section which we very much appreciate.

Competition results

At the end of February, the Roehampton Club Blue team of Malcolm Bricknell, Peter Bonnor-Moris, Ralph Evers and Philip Howard won this year’s Devonshire Cup, beating the Savile Club in the final, thereby retaining the trophy for Roehampton Club for another year.

The match was close with our team finally winning by the relatively small but useful margin of 540 points. In fact, all three Roehampton Club teams did well and reached the quarter finals of the competition, so really an excellent result.

The Club’s pairs competition was played on 12th and 19th February for the Founders Trophy. The winners for a very impressive second year in a row were Henryka and Peter Bonnor-Moris.

They can now represent Roehampton Club in the Surrey pairs tournament for the Mary Edwards Cup. Really well done against some quite experienced competition.

On 15th February we had our match against Hurlingham competing for the Hurlingham Cup. We fielded a strong team and won by a comfortable margin of around 60 imps in a very enjoyable match.

Lessons, Supervised Play and Workshop

The new workshop session on Friday mornings being run by Niall Igoe started up on 8th March. It was very encouraging to see the course so well attended from the outset and so able to get off to a great start. The sessions will be largely complementary to Niall’s very popular Wednesday sessions and will have a strong focus around different aspects of play based on actual hands.

We hope to move to online registration quite soon for this and other lessons if and when the system for Members to book via the club website is operational and working smoothly.

Lessons are now well underway for the spring term with Niall Igoe running two intermediate sessions at the Club and James Thrower taking the beginners class. There are also online options with Tim Chanter and Paul Mendelson for people used to their teaching.

Great to hear that the Lady Golf Captain’s Charity Bridge event on Tuesday 13th February raised an impressive £750 for the local Small Steps charity which supports parents and carers with children who have motor and sensory impairments. I think this is a great tradition for us to support and congrats to the organizers on another well run event.

Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair

The Founders Trohpy is an internal competition over two consecutive  Monday afternoons: the 12th Feb and 19th Feb.  Members only.  11 tables = 22  pairs played = 44  people.

Henryka  and Peter Bonnor-Morris scored 67.53% on the first day and then 58.33% on the 19th winning the Trophy - many congratulations.