Congratulations to England Women's Team on winning the gold medal in the European Teams Championship in Budapest, after an exciting finish. The team were Heather Dondy & Nevena Senior,  Sally Brock & Nicola Smith, Fiona Brown & Catherine Draper, with coach David Burn and our very own Derek as non-playing captain. The team qualifies for the 2017 World Championship Venice Cup in France.

Also well done to England Seniors and our Pat Collins  who were second before the last day, but had a disappointing finish, ending 10th out of 24.

Pictures - Interview - Closing Ceremony

Women's Team Matches:
England vs Poland CR
England vs Poland OR
Netherlands vs England CR
Netherlands vs England OR
Turkey vs England OR

Senior Team Matches:
Poland vs England OR

Congratulations

to Gerald Tredinnick and Derek and their teammates Kay Preddy and Norman Selway for coming second in Swiss Teams in Easter Festival in London.

Congratulations

to Naseer Dashti and his partner for coming second out of 56 pairs in the Really Easy Pairs in Easter Festival in London.

Congratulations to Chislehurst A team who won the Corbett Cup for the 9th year running. The members of the team were Derek, Jon Chapman, Bill Charlwood, Pat Collins, John Griffiths, John Hemington, Peter Law, Michael Prior, Gerald Tredinnick and Stuart Tredinnick (Derek with Bill, Pat and Jon pictured above). The team qualifies to play in the The Garden Cities Trophy, the EBU's inter-county championship for club teams-of-eight.

Also very well done to Chislehurst C team who came second in the Corbett Plate. The members of the team were Adrian Lis, Pat Alcalay, Marco Alcalay, Brian Davies, Roy Lambert, Bob Middleditch, David Powell and Barbara Schultz.

Well done also to Chislehurst D team for their brave effort in the Mitchell Salver division. After a great start they came 2nd after the first half, dropping down to the 6th place at the end. They say they thoroughly enjoyed the event. The members of the team were Chris Clegg, Jim Cormack, Peter Cox, John Hunt, Barbara Jackson, Eleanor Keeley, Graham King and Diana Potter.

Congratulations

to Derek and the rest of the Kent team (including our members Gerald Tredinnick, Mike Hampton, Patrick Collins, Peter Law) who came second in the Tollemache final (national inter-county teams of eight).

We raised a total of
         £288.39.
Big thank you for all donations. Congratulations to the countrywide overall highest placed pair from each section who qualify for a small prize.This is Paul & Nick from Green Section, currently 24th and Rick & John from Red Section, currently 35th out of 2069 pairs.
Click here to see  the results on Ecats.
Well done Chis!

Congratulations

to Derek and his team Andrew Black, Gunnar Hallberg, Phil King, Andrew McIntosh and Gerald Tredinnick on winning Premier League Second Division. They had a very strong finish to the event, scoring 58.55 out of a possible 60 in the final three rounds, and won by 19.29 VPs. The team is promoted to the First Division in the next season.

Congratulations to the England Ladies Team on winning the bronze medal in the Venice Cup at the World Championships  in Chennai.

The members of the team were:
Sally Brock  & Nicola Smith; Fiona Brown & Catherine Draper; Heather Dhondy & Nevena Senior; Coach: David Burn with Derek as non-playing captain.
Derek wrote blogs throughout the championship. You can read them here.
Look at reports and photos on EBU website.

Well done to the English Ladies team who won by 164 IMPs in a friendly match against the French Ladies national team in Paris. Playing were Catherine Draper, Fiona Brown, Sally Brock and Nicola Smith with some help from their captain Derek Patterson playing with coach David Burn. This was a successfull warm up exercise for the World Team Championships - Venice Cup in India at the end of September.

We were sad to hear that the great film and bridge star Omar Sharif passed away at the age of 83.
Do any of you remember seeing him in the Macallan International Bridge Pairs Championship 1999? This was a star studded competition held in the White House Hotel in London. Omar was a real star there, he played bridge for the audience, some of the audience being us from our local bridge clubs. (June, Brigid, Joyce, Eth, Marco, Ron, Jonsey and more - apply to webmaster to have your name added/removed)
I still have the brochure, hand records and my notes  about bidding, play and the conversation at the table.
Here is one hand where Omar played against two German ladies champions, Sabine Auken and Daniela von Arnim. They were dressed to kill. Omar, wearing a rose in his button hole, said that he should be having dinner with them, not play bridge. Sabine and Daniela responded with Mona Lisa smiles.

N/S:  Omar Sharif and Christian Mari (France)
E/W:  Sabine Auken and Daniela von Arnim

Auction:

Omar: "Is 2♥  a transfer?"
: "No, it is natural."
Omar: "And 4♠ now shows spades and clubs?"
: "I hope so." 
(Macallan rules state that bidding should be as natural as possible)
Lead: A♥ 
A♦ at trick two was ruffed by declarer and she then led J♣ which held, discarding from dummy. Then 10♣ was led and ruffed by South. South returned a ♥ , declarer ruffed and played A♠  and K♠. Now top clubs and  the contract was over - South had to either ruff with his last trump and lead to dummy's winners, or duck and then be put on lead with declarer's last trump.
If Omar led K♥  at trick two, life would have been much more complicated for the declarer and she would have to struggle to make even 9 tricks. At least that's how it looks to me when I run the hand through Bridge Solver. Perhaps Omar thought that continuing with K♥  would setup heart winners in dummy for a possible diamond discard, so he tried to cash A♦  while he could.

Come on, ladies, let's listen to Lara's Theme from Doctor Zhivago.

John's double dummy Bridge Solver is now hosted on Bridgewebs. Click on the 'Play it again' button under the hand diagram and then on 'BS Online'. Bridge Solver is also still available via the 'Play it again' button on our own style results pages.

BridgePals, Android based electronic scoring units (designed by John and Mirna), introduced in the Green Section. BridgePads moved from the Green Section to the Red Section.

BridgePads electronic scoring devices introduced in the Green Section.

Technology arrived in 2007. We acquired a dealing machine - australian made Dealer4. This was one of the first machines of this kind in the country. Unlike well known Duplimate machine which needs bar coded cards, Dealer4 can read ordinary cards. There was some doubt about true random nature of the deals ("Too many singleton Kings!"), but statistical analysis of the deals put any doubts at rest.