On other pages you can read about exciting developments in the Academy`s related projects in Tenerife and Fuengirola. Both venues are simultaneously promoting bridge for the elderly and handicapped - as well as the very young. Like those champions aged 6 to 11 pictured above outside the first ACES Academy on Koh Samui in Thailand.

Several of the kiddies in that photo had already broken records for the youngest players to play tournaments alongside senior international players. Each time under the watchful eye of the President of the Asia Pacific zone of the World Bridge federation, Esther Sophonpanich. Let`s see if this second ACES Academy in Europe can bring similar success and happiness to Spanish youngsters and their families. At a time when they need a boost to their morale.

This is a bridge website with a difference. In the same way that the ACES Academy is a club with a difference.

All the articles on this site are relevant to bridge players. Whatever their standard. I like to think they will improve the enjoyment of bridge for everyone - and encourage the young and old as well as the poorly and handicapped to want to play the game. That is not an impossible dream. 

No doubt there will be one or two cynical bridge champions reading this message who disagree with me. But two bridge champions who will agree with me 100% are Philippe Soulet and Franck Multon. The former was twice World Champion. The latter won the Bermuda Bowl in 1997,  and was runner up as recently as 2015.

I sat at the same table as Philippe and Franck on many occasions between 2006 and 2010. But it was not to play bridge with them. It wasn`t for a bridge lesson either.

Our chats at the table would always involve a discussion on how we could bring young people into the game. And at the other end of the age scale, ways of improving the enjoyment of bridge for the infirm. Both felt as passionately as me on those matters.

Both champions are excellent teachers as well. Whilst I have to admit that my best level of bridge was never anywhere near the national standard that Philippe had already achieved at the tender age of just sixteen, I am possibly able to trump his and Franck`s bridge achievements in one respect: In the past two years, the average age of my bridge students is around nine. During the same period, the average age of my partners in club tournaments has been close to seventy nine. 

Trevor 28th February 2019

For your amusement, a humorous look at some of the members`pet names

Starting with the nicknames of the admired youmgsters the first ACES bridge Academy

Rueful Rabbit

Colin the Corgi

Oscar the Owl

Peregrine the Penguin

Molly the Mule

Timothy the Toucan

A few words now about the less desirable and most notorious members of the adult section of the club 

Hideous Hog

is by far the club's best player.

But also an insufferable shark who seeks to humiliate** opponents for their mistakes

Charlie the Chimp

would rather post mortem the last hand than play the next.  

Once famously produced a remarkable (and impossible) quadruple

squeeze against himself by retaining a small card to conceal his own revoke.

Walter the Walrus

whose expertise in - and devotion to - the point count

are matched only by the utter mess he makes of bidding and playing

** Here is a sample of those humiliating quotes attributed to Hideous Hog:

"I know no one whom I would rather see in charge of the dummy"

"I do not doubt your luck, and I know no one who needs it more than you"

"Of course I always hold much better cards than you do. Being declarer is part of my system"

"I am such a fine player, no one can deny my right to be rude"

"How dare you bid no trumps and become declarer".

"My point count system? Extra for long suit, extra for short suit and 3 points for my superb play"

Playing is always

GREAT FUN at ACES