CONGRATULATIONS

To David Barnes and the Reading "A" team who are the 2011-12 Champions of the Berks and Bucks Teams of 8 League. Although New Amersham "A" have one match left to play they cannot catch the leaders.

RBC 6-monthly Competitions

The current round of 6 monthly competitions were completed at the end of February. Those successful in the Tuesday competition for the Brown Cup were David Barnes with 58.69%, followed by Roger Donato with 57.23% and Mikes Perkins and Ribbins both in the 56%+ category. Also on Tuesdays in the Laycock Cup (handicap competition) Roger Donato came out top with 54.61%, followed by Mike Ribbins with 54.39% and Ilan Sirkis with 53.36%. On Thursdays the Boucher Cup was won by Leon McArdle with 61.31%, closely followed by Pam Hanson with 60.94% and Nick Higham with 60.32%. The Thursday handicap competition for the Bilbey Cup was won by Peter Francis with 55.91%, Ann Francis was second with 54.39% and Gloria Arzberger third with 53.36%. The complete results can be seen in the Results Archive pages of the web site and on the notice board at the club.

One interesting outcome for this period is that the results obtained for the handicap competitions using the Bridgewebs methodology are very similar to the RBC calculations. The first 2 positions in the Laycock Cup and the first 3 positions in the Bilbey Cup are replicated by the Bridgewebs method. I will leave the Sept 11 to Feb 12 tables for the Bridgewebs handicap competition current for a while to allow anyone interested to look at them and compare with the Bilbey and Laycock results.

One other outstanding performance by a Thursday player was achieved by Leon McArdle playing in the Sunday Swiss Pairs event at South Bucks Bridge Club in January. At the beginning of the final match Leon and his partner were slightly above average and hence in the final round were playing a pair with a similar score. In this round their match point scores out of 28 over the 6 boards were 28, 23, 28, 25, 26, and 21. That gave them a score of 89.88% for the set of boards. I don't recall ever seeing a score that high before. Since the match point score was converted to Victory Points they won 20-0. Unfortunately you get a 20-0 scoreline for around 65% so they failed to gain full reward for their excellent match, but still managed to climb to 4th spot overall.

2011 Master Point rankings

The EBU have just released the Master Point ranking lists for 2011. If you want to see how far you are ahead of your partner then all the detail is on the EBU web site.

However the ranking for points won at Reading Bridge Club sessions in 2011 is:

1. Ken Jones          1060

2. Ilan Sirkis            838

3. Maureen Carver    771

NATIONAL PAIRS HEAT

Last nights event was a heat of the National Pairs. Seven pairs competed in the qualifying competition which means that 3 qualified. These are Jim Chapman & Mike Wenble, Mike O'Neill & Roger Donato and Janet & David Barnes. The reserve pair, should any of these be unavailable, is Pat Dowdeswell & Mike Ribbins. The correct master point awards will be shown when the results are relisted as the two separate sections, but the single green point award will go to Jim and Mike.

Gold Cup Win for John Howard

Winning the Gold Cup, the major British Teams trophy on the Bridge calendar is pretty much the high point of ambition for all Bridge players. This year John Howard joins this elite group. I'm sure he would be the first to admit to the assistance of his regular partner Andy Bowles and four other teammates, but it is nevertheless a great achievement and on behalf of all in the club I offer him our very warmest congratulations.

John becomes I think the 5th member of Reading Bridge Club to win the Gold Cup, following Eric Crowhurst and Alan Wardman in 1971 and David Mossop and Tim Rees who won in 2000 (and then retained the trophy the following year). Now there's a new challenge for John!

Tony Parkinson, President RBC

RBC Anuual Competitions 2011

The 2011 Presidents and Francis Cup Competitions were concluded on 15th November. This year the Presidents Cup winner is Tim Rees, well clear of John Howard and Mike Perkins who were second and third respectively. The Francis Cup was won by (guess who?)  Tim Rees in partnership with John Howard, again (not surprisingly) well clear of Mike Perkins and John Howard in second place and Mike Ribbins and Janet Barnes in third.

Links to the BBCBA County Calendar and to the details for the next County Events are in the left hand column. Clicking on the appropriate item will take you to the relevant page of the County Web Site.

Tony Parkinson

Congratulations

We have both internal and external successes to report.

Several Reading members made the traditional August trip to Brighton and they featured in the upper reaches on both weekends. In the Swiss Pairs Tim Rees and partner came 28th and Pat Dowdeswell and Mike Ribbins 32nd (out of around 350 pairs). The second weekend for Swiss Teams again saw Tim feature in the Premier final, while Pat and Mike with David Barnes and Nigel Guthrie (I know he's no longer a member but we all remember his individualistic style) came second in the Brighton Bowl ahead of well known England internationals in 3rd and 4th. Great performances by all of them.

Tommy Brass was in the England Under 20s Team which finished 4th in the Europeans and thus qualified for the World Championships, and was also awarded the "Best Young Pair of the year" title with his regular partner. Look forward to seeing them come back from the Worlds with medals.

In the Club competitions the latest 6 monthly series have just finished. In the Tuesday competitions the Brown Cup was won by Tim Rees, a nail biting 0.1% ahead of Mike Ribbins, while the Laycock Cup went to Cecile Pattison, again marginally ahead of Mike Ribbins. Apparently Mike is arranging extra training sessions for future partners - beware. For the Thursday trophies the Boucher Cup went to Maureen Carver narrowly ahead of her regular partner Pam Hanson, while the Bilbey Cup which applies a handicap was won by Alex Mears with a clear margin from Chris Fox-Geen.

The full results for all the Bi-Annual competitions ending in August 2011 are now available in the Results Archive page of the web site and on the relevant notice boards at the club.

Tony Parkinson

SPRING IMPs 2011

The Bridge Plus Cup held last Tuesday June 28th was the final session counting for the Spring IMPs Series 2011. The result this year was fairly close with the final session changing the order of competitors.

The winner this year was Pat Dowdeswell with 76 MPs from the 6 events, closely followed by Tim Rees and Tony Parkinson with 72 MPs, with the previous leader Mike Ribbins, who sat out the last round, dropping to 4th place with 68 MPs.

Friendly Pairs Success

Congratulations to Gill Smith and Chris Cook who won the County Friendly Pairs last Sunday with Nick and Leslie Higham 4th. Lots of other Reading BC pairs took part and I hope they all enjoyed their day. Make sure you return and emulate Gill and Chris in the future.

Tony Parkinson

READING SPIRIT HANDICAP TEAMS

The result as shown in the Results section gives the scores without adjusting for the Handicap Allowances. This is because it is not allowable to award Master Points for scores based on Handicaps (and also because Scorebridge doesn't have a facility to award allowances along the Reading Spirit model).  The result of the competition for the Reading Spirit therefore is as follows:

1. Team 2  Mike Ribbins & Janet Barnes, John Greenhalgh & James Bond  66+9  =  75

2. Team 5  Mike Perkins & Chris Cooper, Andrew Murphy & Tim Rees  54+0 = 54

3. Team 4 Jon Green & John Howard, Patrick Moore & Leon McArdle  25+27 = 53

4. Team 1 Pat Dowdeswell & Ian Mackinder, Joyce Baldock & Tony Parkinson  17+15 = 32

Curiously, adding on the handicap allowances made no changes to the order of the teams.

Tony Parkinson

Spring 2011 6 monthly competitions

The Spring 2011 Tuesday 6 monthly competitions concluded recently and the results are available on the "Results Archive" page. The Brown Cup was won by Mike Perkins by a large margin from Keith Goswell and Reg Watson. In the Laycock Cup Keith came out on top from Reg with Cecile Pattison third. Well done to all of them.

The Thursday competitions have now also completed and ended with  very close competition in both. The results are available on the "Results Archive" page. The Boucher Cup was won by Ilan Sirkis from Ken Jones and Pam Hanson who were both within 1%. The Bilbey Cup was won by Rod Plank by a very small margin from Ilan, with Patrick Moore third.

Latest BBCBA News

The latest County Calendar of events and the details for the Mixed and Seniors Pairs Events both to be held in April are now available on the County News Page. Click on the index at the left to see them.

RBC Master Point Champions 2010

The EBU have just published the list of those who won the most Master Points in sessions at each club for the year 2010. At Reading the top three were:

1. Maureen Carver    689

2. Pam Hanson          639

3. Martyn Jordan       412

Congratulations to them.

           A curious hand - click to investigate!

A different sort of Handicap Competition

Reading Bridge Clubs Handicap Competitions have always had very precise rules about the Handicap Calculation, how it is applied, and the eligibility of members to qualify in the final reckoning. It is not surprising therefore that a generalised system such as Bridgewebs does not currently provide a methodology which enables the the Reading Handicap competitions to be calculated automatically. The latest version however goes some way towards providing methods that begin to mirror some of the traits of the Reading system. I have suggested to Bridgewebs that they make further enhancements to their allowable handicap methodologies to cater for the Reading systems.

In the meantime however I have defined a new handicap competition, based on the Laycock Cup which can be calculated automatically by Bridgewebs. It can be observed on the "Competitions" Page under the "Handicap Competition" title. Note that there is no intention currently that this should replace the Laycock Cup, which will continue to be calculated by our own proprietary software.

The essential features of the new competition are as follows:

1. The competition runs over the same period and the same events as the Laycock Cup. It has the same eligibility rules (i.e. 8 appearances in the period with 3 different partners to qualify).

2. The Individual Handicaps for the period are the same as for the Laycock Cup (the exception being that for members with no handicap Bridgewebs ascribes an arbitrary handicap of 5).

3. The score adjustment works somewhat differently to the Laycock Cup. In this case the adjustment is applied to ones score on each appearance. The adjustment is calculated as the average of the handicaps of you and your partner, so a highly ranked pair are adjusted more severely than a lower ranked pair. Ones overall average score is then the average of the adjusted scores for each appearance and the ranking list is then generated by placing eligible members in order of their average adjusted score.