We play duplicate bridge every Tuesday evening from the start of September to the end of June in the Buckstone Suite at Braid Hills Hotel, 134 Braid Road on the South Side of Edinburgh. The club is a very friendly one, but the bridge is taken reasonably seriously.

The club has a team in the SBU East District Leagues which will be playing in the third division in season 2016/17. Teams for the league come from Bridge Clubs in Edinburgh and Surrounding areas.

Visitors are very welcome but should accompany an existing member or contact the Secretary in advance. Applications for Membership can be made through the Secretary.

With it being the school half-term week, we only had 20 members playing.  However, since this was 5 full tables, we played our Teams of 4 night for October.

The top 2 teams are as announced on the night:

First:  Sue W, Sylvia, Marjorie and Vic with +32 IMPs for 20 Masterpoints

Second:  Bob Y, Dave C, Ian and Sue C with +13 IMPs for 10 Masterpoints

Well done to all concerned.

We now just produce 28 computer dealt boards each week since we rarely play/use more than 28 Boards.  However, with 5 teams we used 30 Boards with each team playing 24 of them.  Boards 29 and 30 were therefore Boards that had been dealt previously so did not appear on the printouts.  For some reason, the website is showing hands for Boards 29 and 30 but these are not the hands we played.  There were again some very interesting hands.  The sheet shows that slams were possible for NS on Board 6 and for EW on Boards 7, 19 and 21.  However, no slams were bid on these hands though 12 tricks were made by at least some of the couples on Boards 7, 19 and 21.  The only slam bid on the night was 6H by Eve and Syd on Board 11 which they made although the analysis sheet shows that EW could have held this to 11 tricks.

The IMPs won have been added to the Club Team-Player Trophy page on the website.  It shows Sue W and Marjorie in the lead with 127 IMPs having both been in the winning team in September and October.

The Masterpoints awarded count towards the Quaich so as shown on the Competition page of the website, Marjorie now takes over the lead with 104 points from Bob Y on 98 points.

The SBU and local clubs frequently run Bridge events at weekends.  On Sunday 16 October there were 2 separate events held in Edinburgh.

The East heat of the Bronze National Pairs was held at the Melville.  Nine of our members were among the 48 pairs that played, with Jane Harper part of the pair in 3rd place and Ian and Cat Bryson being our topped placed pair in 10th place.

On the same day, the Carlton held their Handicap Congress.  Five of our members took part.  It proved a very successful day for Ian and Sue Campbell who won the Handicap Pairs event in the afternoon and then teamed up with David Nisbet and Ian Thomson in the Swiss teams in the evening and won the Bronze 2 prize for the best placed Bronze 2 Team.

These events are always very enjoyable and our members are encouraged to consider taking part, particularly in the events that are now being organised for Bronze Category players, which covers most of us at Colinton Castle.

It was good to see 15 pairs playing in the first night of our new Club Pairs Competition.  We played a 26 Board Part Howell so while most pairs played 24 boards some played all 26.  The percentage scores take account of this difference.

The scoring was pretty close across the field with the percentages closely packed between 42 and 58%.

The top scorers were:

1st Ian and Cat B with 165 points for 57.3% and 30 Masterpoints

2nd Vic and Marjorie with 163 points for 56.6% and 24 Masterpoints

3rd Yvonne and Tom with 158 points for 54.9% and 18 Masterpoints

4th Ian and Sue C with 151 points for 52.4% and 12 Masterpoints

5th David N and Ian T with 148 points for 51.4% and 6 Masterpoints

Well done to all involved.

The hands again provided some challenging distributions and competitive bidding.  The analysis sheet shows that there were possible slams available on Boards 1, 2 and 13.  While 12 tricks were made at some tables on Boards 1 and 2, no-one bid the very difficult slams both made from 22 points.  On Boards 13, 12 tricks were made at 6 of the 7 tables but Jane and Ann were the only pair to have bid the 6NT slam.

The Masterpoints awarded are recorded on the Quaich page of the Competitions section of the website which shows Bob Young leading with 88 points so far this year with Marjorie in close pursuit on 84 points.

The percentage scores from last night also show on the Club Pairs page of the website where the average of the best 3 scores for each pairing will be shown as we play the other heats of the Club Pairs over the months until March.

We had a record 8 full tables last night and played a 24 board Mitchell.

Top 3 NS:

Moira & Norman Poyser - 30 masterpoints                                                      

David Nisbet & Ian Thomson - 20 Masterpoints                                             

 Ann Smith & Jacquelyn Dick -  10 Masterpoints  

Top EW

Bob Young & Walter Beveridge - 30 Masterpoints                                           

Ian & Sue Campbell - 20 Masterpoints                                                

Jane Harper & Jimmy Higgins -10 Masterpoints

Boards 5, 12 and 20 had a card switched between ES, EW and WS  respectively so the optimum score for these boards may not be as stated on the results sheet.

Boards 16 to 18 were played out of order at one table and the players affected have been awarded an average for these boards.