New for the Autumn and Winter - Teams Evenings - on Monday 31 October, Thursday 24 November, Monday 16 January and Thursday 23 February.

Play on these evenings will be for full teams only, with a deadline for entering of close of play one week ahead. Notes are available in the clubroom for you to sign up as a team, and to sign up as a pair looking to make up a team.

Please bear with us as we trial this new format over four sessions in the next four months.  We have had many request for Teams evenings; this is your opportunity to make them work.

And see below for news of a Swiss Pairs event....

Friday morning course 9:45 -11:45

Ossett War Memorial Community Centre, Prospect Road, Ossett, WF5 8AN 

The lesson, October 28th, will cover opener's rebid, whether it is a weak or strong hand, jump bidding, reverses and jump shift bids. There will be a charge - to cover the room hire - of £4 per session.This is a great opportunity for those who have begun playing to put their understanding of the bidding on a much firmer footing - so please let Janet know you are interested by emailing her at janeteaster1@btinternet.com.

Monday 21 November will see us run our very first Swiss Pairs event.

In this sort of event, each Pair playing is drawn randomly against one other Pair, and plays five boards against them.  The scoring is as for regular Pairs events, but converted to Victory Points (VPs), the winners scoring most of the 20 VPs available.

At the end of the first round each Pair is matched against a new Pair which scored a similar result in the first round; and at the end of the second (and third, and fourth,) rounds the process is repeated.   This means that:

• each Pair plays five rounds of five boards - 25 boards in total
• each round after the first (random) round is against a Pair of a similar standard (= with similar results) in the competition so far - the better you play the 'better' your opponents will be
• each of the five-board matches is against a different Pair - you never play two matches against the same Pair
• all tactics are 'normal' dupliacte Pairs tactics
• at the end of the evening the Pair with the highest score (most VPs) wins.

This sort of event takes quite a bit of organising, not least because we need five or even six identical sets of boards, and it is quite demanding of the TD.  However, it does offer a real change from the regular diet of 'normal' duplicate Pairs, and can be very enjoyable.  To help with the organisation we are asking all members who wish to play to sign up as early as possible on the sheet in the club room.  Do come along and join in the fun!

We are delighted to report another very successful day for local club teams competing for the Edna Hunter Trophy.  The ten teams represented six different clubs, and after a hard-fought event the team of Karen Lemm, husband Martin Fenton, David Hannam and Richard Porteus (representing Ossett) emerged as clear winners with 70 IMPS, well ahead of the chasing pack.  Brighouse came in second, and a Wakefield team was third. Congratulations to them and all who took part - we hope that you enjoyed the day and will be back with us next year.  Full results are now available - see the Latest Result link to the right.

Many thanks go to all those who worked so hard to make the day such a success - especially Beverley Barrows and Pat Maynard.  This is the tenth time we have staged this event, and it simply could not happen without you - thank you! And thanks also to TD John O'Sullivan and scorer Chris Maynard....

East leads ♣ K, how should north play to make 4 Spades?

Further to the note below about members going out and about in competitions at other clubs, John O'Sullivan and Ian Johns have been busy again.  This time it was the recent Garforth Swiss Teams event, where they partnered Malton's John Hayton and Mike Jackson to victory.  This combination has won the event previously, but this time they cut it very fine - winning four matches and drawing two saw them triumph by a single IMP. 

Congratulations all round! 

Adrian Goulding recently attended an advanced TD training day in Coventry and following a successful assessment, passing with distinction, has been appointed as a County Director.  Congratulations Adrian as the club and county will no doubt benefit from your knowledge and experience.

The recent EBU Northern Midweek Congress was the first held in the Wakefield area, at the Cedar Court hotel in early August, and although our more established players struggled a little against very high quality opposition there were some modest successes for our less experienced players.

Karen Lemm's team (of Margaret Sewell, Elaine Blain and Ann Fitt) had something of a traumatic experience in the Swiss Teams.  After facing Graham Jepson in the first of seven rounds, they then met John Holland (current England international) in the second.  The third round saw them facing a Doncaster team composed of Yorkshire League 1st Division players, whilst the fourth round brought only Eddie Lucioni, a fixture at the top of the EBU Master Points rankings.  How they then managed to get through the next two rounds is anybody's guess, but after a baptism of fire like that they should now be ready to take on the world!

The quality of the opposition in that Swiss Teams event was, clearly, very high, so Jenny Davies' team did exceptionally well to win two of their matches there, and finish with a creditable overall result. 

However, perhaps the real triumph was for Karen (again) and husband Martin - they came FIRST in their stratification group in the pairs – a result that our President (and he should know) describes as 'an unqualified success for a relatively inexperienced pair in a National event.'

Congratulations to them all!  

The full results are available on the EBU website at https://app.pianola.net/Results/Session105258

It's very encouraging to see how many of our players are now taking part in competitions away from the club.

The EBU Congress in Wakefield attracted many players from the club, in addition to those given honourable mentions above.  Three pairs went to the Play without the Experts event in York (see left), again with some success, and we also had representation in the Castle  event in Scarborough.  If you haven't yet considered trying one of these 'outside' events, could this be the time to start....? 

Wakefield Bridge Club

Wakefield Bridge Club is based at the West Yorkshire Sports and Social Club, Sandal Hall Close, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF2 6ER. The club was founded in November 1953 and now has about 130 members.

We play duplicate bridge on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and - for beginners - on Monday morning.  See the note to the right for more detail on the different sessions.  We generally field between eight and eleven tables, and visitors are always welcome.   

The club has ample parking and a fully licensed bar.  Although we play in an upstairs room disability is no handicap to playing - there is a stair lift, and table movements can readily accommodate the less mobile.

The Secretary is Stephen Hanslip.  Please contact him on 01924-220863 or 0781 555 3130 - or at secretary@wakefieldbridgeclub.org.uk.

The Match Secretary is Chris Maynard.  For any enquiries about Yorkshire League Matches please contact him on 01924-276877 or 07962 019 661 - or at bridgeclubchris@googlemail.com

The club subscribes on members' behalf to Pianola, an online tool which helps you review your performance, analyse where you went wrong - and see how you can do things better in future.  If you have accepted the invitation from the club to join, just click the button below to log in to Pianola.  If you would like another invitation simply email or phone the Secretary.

Now that the Bank Holiday is behind us, the Monday morning sessions continue as normal - except that the Monday morning teaching is suspended for the summer holidays, and will return on Monday 19 September. 

If you have any ideas for topics that you would like discussed, please just let the Secretary know by the usual means.....

Were you there for the YCBA Individual Competition held on Tuesday 10 May?  The day went very well, and full details of the results and hands are available under the Results tab......

And many congratulations to the winner, David Duckworth.