On Thursday evening 6th October we are starting an additional duplicate session intended primarily for inexperienced players. Attendance guidelines are the same as Tuesday morning, that is any partnership may only have one player with more than 5000 Master Points.  The session is hosted.  Play will start at 7.15pm.

The demand for beginners course has been higher than we originally expected. We are now running three parallel Bridge for All Year 1 courses starting in October. They will run on Monday afternoons, Wednesday mornings and Thursday evenings.  The classes are full but we are running waiting lists in case there are cancellations. Click for details.

In the Saturday 20^th August edition of the Telegraph, EBED (the part of the EBU responsible for Education and Development) published an advert encouraging those interested in learning the game to make contact.  OBS is registered to receive any enquiries that come from the Oxford area. We have adapted their material to provide a localised version.  Please tell your friends, their parents, their children and their grandchildren. The EBED advert appears on the puzzle page in the weekend supplement.

As part of the club’s initial programme, Peter Litchfield has offered to give a course on the 2/1 (“two over one”) system for those experienced players who would like to become familiar with the system.  As well as the specifics of 2/1, the course would cover the general mechanics of a five card major, strong no trump system and as such could be of interest to those who do not want to embrace the full power of 2/1. The course content is under consideration, but the format will probably be one hour of teaching and discussion and one hour of playing example hands.   The course would run on ten evenings, probably not before the autumn of 2016.  If you are interested in such a course, please e-mail education@oxfordbridgeclub.com of course without final commitment.  We need to establish that there is sufficient interest to warrant putting on the course and would welcome indicative responses by 29th February. For further brief details of the system click here.

UPDATE There will be a course starting on 3rd October and running for 5 sessions. Click here for details.

The Education team has produced promotional postcards giving information about our courses.

More information is in the May member's bulletin from our chairman.

Congratulations go to this year’s winners of the Morrie Marsh Trophy, Tessa Goddard and John Cooper with 64.84%. In second place were Colin Wels and Tilly Dearden, and third were Matt Wright and Jan van der Ploeg.  The Morrie Marsh is the club pairs competition for novice players. Entrants may have no more than 500 EBU Masterpoints. The photo below shows the presentation at the end of the event.

Pictured are (left to right) Richard Sills (OBC Chairman and scorer for the evening), Tessa Goddard, John Cooper and John Briggs (Oxford Bridge Learning and Director for the event).

There is now a notice board for Oxford Bridge School in the middle room at the clubhouse. 

The first of our Saturday Seminars is on Saturday 5th March starting at 9.30 am.   Come along to hone your skills in making more tricks when playing in suit contracts, one of the keys to success at Pairs.   See the poster in the clubhouse or visit the website here for further details.   Each seminar costs £10 including coffee.  

If you have friends who want to learn to play bridge, please encourage them to book a place for one of our free taster sessions on Thursday 3rd March or Thursday 5th May.   Booking is online here.   Beginners’ courses will start in September and will be run on Thursday evenings and Wednesday mornings following the EBU’s Bridge for All programme.

Oxford Bridge Club is now running its own education programme under the banner of ‘Oxford Bridge School’. From Monday 18th January 2016 we are offering courses to both members and non-members. Look out for the posters in the club and visit education.oxfordbridgeclub.com for full details of courses and for information on how to book your place.

The education programme is being run by a team of volunteers from the club. Viccy Fleming is the Education Manager, Cecilia Lloyd is to be the Education Administrator and Lis Long will be running Marketing. Colin Wels will be responsible for managing the sessions on Monday evenings and Thursday mornings from the end of March when OBL will hand these over to OBC. Feel free to talk to any of the team to share your thoughts and ideas or send an email to education@oxfordbridgeclub.com.

Bookings are now open for our series of Saturday Seminars (starting on Saturday 5th March) and for two courses, Aspects of Play I (starting on Tuesday 23rd February) and Aspects of Play II (starting on Wednesday 24th February). Full details are on the club’s website. Over time we plan to offer courses to players of all abilities including beginners, who will follow the EBU’s Bridge for All programme.  

The OBC Chairman’s monthly bulletins will contain brief information about the education programme. However many of you may wish to register separately for educational updates so that you can book your place on a new course as soon as it is announced. To do this, visit the Education area of the website and click on ‘Get regular updates by email’. Click on the “Info Signup” button then when the registration page opens up, enter your email address and name, then select some or all of the various options.

Plans are being made to strengthen the path that OBC offers to new players wishing to gain confidence in their ability, thereby enabling them to become regular club members. Please contact me if you are willing to help to support new players or if you have ideas about how this can be done.

We also plan to run a mentoring system within the club for players of all abilities.   There will be a pilot scheme in the autumn to trial the system, for which participants will be needed. Watch out for further information later in the year and email education@oxfordbridgeclub.com to register an interest.

Finally I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to the launch of Oxford Bridge School, in particular to John Fleming (website pages and booking system), Chris Kerr (financial guidance), the Education Committee and to all those who have volunteered, particularly to those offering to teach courses at short notice and to those who have taken on specific roles so willingly.

Viccy Fleming
Education Manager
17th January 2016