The recent AGM was well attended and the annual report looked back on the events of the last year and
where the club is presently.
Sarah Gilbert was asked to present the cups and prizes and she has asked us to include a few words.
“ I was very honoured to be asked to present the awards and thank the committee for asking me.
It really is a great pleasure to be a member of the Bradgate Bridge club.
It is such a friendly, welcoming club with members pitching in with whatever is required, not only
to keep it running smoothly
but also to help one another progress with their Bridge skills.
Our dedicated and adaptable committee has worked miracles this year to navigate through an ever
changing landscape.
On a personal level I would like to thank all members for their support as well as their tolerance
when I am directing.”
I think we would all agree with her sentiments and thank her and many others for their continued support
and hard work.
We also thought it would be an appropriate time to look at a couple of individuals and their thoughts on
Bridge, starting with Phil Watts who is certainly one of the longest playing members.
Thank you to Phil for sharing this with us.
MY 60 YEARS OF BRIDGE By Philip Watts
Like a good many things in life, life-changing events can happen quite arbitrarily. My almost lifelong
association with the game of Bridge started by coincidence. I left school just before my eighteenth
birthday to start work as an apprentice at the Leicester machine tool makers, Jones & Shipman Ltd. As
luck would have it, in the first office I worked, the secretary of the office manager, a lady called Rae
Hartopp, asked me if I played Bridge. I played “kitchen Bridge” at home so I said, “yes”. Then she asked
if I played Acol. I replied that I didn’t know what she was talking about! I obviously couldn’t have
been playing the game properly! Not to worry, Rae happened to be secretary of the Jones & Shipman Bridge
Club. Myself and another lad in the office, named Barry, a little older than me, were press-ganged into
playing some practice games in the following weeks. Some scribbled notes on some paper about basic Acol
were given to us to learn and a rudimentary partnership was formed. We only played a few times before
Barry left the Company to work elsewhere. However another young lad, Geoff, was interested in playing
and a more purposeful partnership was formed. Within a year we were of sufficient standard to be let
loose in the works Bridge second team playing in the LCBA Tof8 league.
We started to make an impact in the team as our results got better. Then, I suppose, there was a time
when “the lights came on”. Geoff and I were playing in a Simultaneous Charity Pairs run at the time by
Leicester University BC. Geoff and I won one of the directions in the Mitchell Movement. Everyone got a
booklet of the hands which had been put together by the experts of the day (Reese, Schapiro, Hiron etc.)
This fired my enthusiasm further and I personally resolved to learn the Acol system backwards and bought
my first Bridge book, “All About Acol” by Ben Cohen and Rhoda Lederer. I soon knew all about limit
bidding, forcing bids and invitation bids.
It was around this time that Howard Stevens, Jones & Shipman Bridge Club Chairman, was looking for a
partner. He knew I was keen and with a good knowledge of Acol. We soon formed a partnership and I was
playing in the first team in the League. Working at the same Company we had plenty of opportunity to
discuss our bidding understandings and experiment with a lot of conventions. Howard developed the
“Stevens-Watts Approach to 3NT”, a convention that a few people even play today! I became Jones &
Shipman Bridge Club secretary and first team captain.
We started to play in the LCBA competitions and we were making an impact winning the Loughborough Cup and
the Hyman Crammer pairs. This led to invitations to play for the County in other counties’ invitation
competitions and occasionally in the Dawes League. Not only this, we ventured into national competition
entering the Gold Cup and the Crockfords Cup as Jones & Shipman teams.
Howard wasn’t as keen to play as often as I was, so I joined County Duplicate Bridge Club. This opened up
a further window of opportunity and I started playing regularly with other partners in local and
national events. I was playing in the major team competitions, Gold Cup, Crockfords, & Hubert Phillips,
also congresses and national Swiss teams events. I was regularly playing 7 days a week (if only at
lunchtimes at Jones & Shipman).
For 3 years I was master points secretary of the LCBA. In those days master points for all the county
competitions were handwritten on vouchers which then had to be distributed around the clubs – quite a
big job.
I suppose this hectic schedule was beginning to take its toll: travelling and then playing 100+ boards
over a weekend can be mentally challenging. When I reached my late thirties I started to get interested
in running, I met my wife, and Bridge became a secondary interest again. In the 1980’s Jones & Shipman
Ltd was starting to feel the effects of the recession and was shrinking fast. The members’ sports &
social club, of which the Bridge Club was a part, disbanded. As a result Howard Stevens and I joined
Bradgate BC and the rest is, as they say, history. My downturn in interest meant that I was only playing
Monday club nights, and League Tof8 on a Wednesday in winter. As I get older my ambition has waned and,
these days, I am happy just to be playing a good standard of Bridge in pleasant company – something at
which Bradgate BC excels”.
Many congratulations to Phil for such an illustrious career, truly an inspiration and shows what can be
achieved with hard work and dedication.
At the other end of the scale we spoke to a couple of students who kindly contributed their thoughts as
they start their Bridge careers. Catherine Mynott and her partner Ian Yeaxlee are retired teachers now
in Year 2 of the Charnwood Bridge teachers’ scheme. They wanted to take up a new interest together that
would use their brains and introduce them to new people and as they liked playing cards then Bridge was
the obvious answer.
They found the first year carefully structured with excellent notes each week and well supported by
supplementary material. They really appreciated the buddy system with a ‘helper’ at the table beside you
each session. They worked hard and practised with friends over the summer either at home or at the golf
club. Catherine feels that the second year is definitely building on the early foundations and they are
beginning to appreciate the game and feel ready to try a small local village Bridge club. Ian said he
thinks
Bridge is a wonderful, fascinating game; he can’t wait to learn more. He says he loves the logic of the
play
and having a conversation with the bidding .Definitely excellent players of the future; good luck to
them
both and thanks for their comments.