READING SPIRIT HANDICAP TEAMS

This event was held last Tuesday. The result shown in the main Results section is before the handicaps were applied, since Master Points can only be awarded on a non-handicap basis. After the Handicaps were applied there were no changes in the team order (I believe the second year running where this has been the case). The scores after handicap were:

1. Perkins/Hawkes/Bond/Greenhalgh          59 + 4 = 63

2. Ribbins/Barnes/Maxwell/Sirkis              25 + 24 = 49

3. Donato/Watson/Dawson/Dawson           -4 + 32 = 28

4. Parker/Brown/Thomas/Spielmann         -27 + 28 =  1

5. Mullen/Plank/Carver/Carver                -52 + 32 =  -20

Thursday Competition Winners

Apologies for the late announcement of the Thursday Competition winners for the period September 2012 to Februray 2013 but there were a couple of issues regarding semi-duplicated names that need ed to be sorted before the results could be confirmed.

However for the Boucher Cup it's congratulations to Dave Mullen with a 1% margin from Pam Hanson with Jackie Paxford a further 1/2% away in 3rd place. In the Bilbey Handicap Cup David Salmon was a clear 3% ahead of Mel Thomas who had about 1/2% margin from Rita Harrigan. Well done to you all.

CONGRATULATIONS

To Sam Botfield and Peter Parsons who have won the Thursday event at the British Spring  SIM pairs with a massive score of over 73%. Great victory guys.

"Keen on Learning to Play Bridge?"

Reading Bridge Club is a long established club and has its own premises at 35 Jesse Terrace, Reading, RG17RS where the club is starting a class for beginners. The teacher, Marilyn Murtagh, is a well respected local teacher and has many years of experience in giving novices a solid grounding in all areas of the game.  Once you have covered the basics and played some supervised duplicate bridge the club provides an ideal step up into playing club bridge in the friendly and welcoming atmosphere of our Thursday night sessions.

The first phase of your move towards learning to play is a 10 week term on Monday evenings starting on the 8th of April (PLEASE NOTE THIS REVISED START DATE). This will cost £60 and will allow you to play at the club at member's rates (£2 per evening) for the following year. If you are interested in taking part please contact Marilyn who will be happy to answer any questions you may have. You can get in touch with Marilyn by calling 01628 546969 or by text message on 07751308831 or by email at murtaghm@hotmail.com. Marilyn will phone you back if you provide a contact number.

RBC 6-monthly Competitions

The current round of Tuesday 6 monthly competitions were completed last night. Although there is a remaining query over last nights results this will not affect the disposition of the trophies. Those successful in the Tuesday competition for the Brown Cup were Mike Perkins with 59.62%, followed by Tim Rees with 58.91% and Mike Ribbins with 58.05%. In the Laycock Cup (handicap competition) Mike Ribbins came out top with 54.49%, followed by Tony Parkinson with 52.55% and Dale Thomas with 51.73%. The Thursday competitions still have a couple of sessions to go and the recent positions are on the Notice Board at the club.

2012 Master Point rankings

The EBU have just released the Master Point ranking lists for 2012. 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 2012 is:

1. Pam Hanson            738

2. Maureen Carver       695

3. Leon McArdle          667

Christmas Social Event December 13th

At the Committee Meeting last night it was confirmed that the Social event held on December 13th should not count towards the ongoing Thursday Cup Competitions. The primary reason for this was that the event became a Pairs Event with randomly drawn partnerships because of the problem with the printer which meant that we were not able to produce movement cards for the intended Individual Event. The Boucher Cup table on the Web has been amended to take account of this. I will endeavour to update the paper copies of the Boucher and Bilbey Cups on the notice board as soon as possible.

Tony Parkinson  29//1/13

RBC Pro Am

Please note that this event which was due to take place on Thursday January 24th will not now take place. There is a Pro Am scheduled for Thursday April 25th and we hope for a good turnout on that occasion. Please note the date in your diaries.

RBC Annual Competitions 2012

The 2012 Presidents and Francis Cup Competitions were concluded on 20th November. This year retaining the Presidents Cup is Tim Rees, just ahead of Mike Perkins, with Peter Hawkes in third spot. The Francis Cup was also retained by Tim Rees but this year in partnership with Mike Perkins with Mike Ribbins and Pat Dowdeswell some way back in second place. Peter Hawkes and Chris Kinloch were third.

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.

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

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

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.

           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.