Congratulations to the winners of the annual cup trophies for 2025:

Richard Mayes and Tony Jones won the Phil Cooke Memorial Cup for the third year in a row for the highest  average pairs score over the year.

Richard Turner won the Individual Winners Cup for the highest average score for a single individual player over the year.

Thank you to Stuart Burroughs, the curator of the Museum of Bath at Work for presenting the cups to the winners.

Tony Jones and Richard Mayes with the Phil Cooke Memorial Trophy		Richard Turner with the Individual Winners Cup

Bath City Bridge Club plays duplicate bridge on Monday afternoons at the Museum of Bath at Work on Julian Road.  Sessions start at 13.45 but players should arrive by 13.30.    We are not affiliated to the EBU so no master points can be earned. We just play for fun.  Boards are automatically dealt and scoring is carried out using Bridgemate devices.  The results of each session are calculated by a computer and uploaded to this website.

Bridge movements are complicated and designed to produce the most equitable result (i.e. the ‘fairest given the constraints of time and the number of participating pairs).

For our club, by far the ‘fairest’ and most satisfactory movement is obtained when we have 9 full tables and play 2 boards at each table.  

Everyone plays all the boards and meets every pair of the opposite ‘polarity’.  Your true opponents are not the opposition at the table but all those pairs playing ‘in your direction’. So we have a N/S winner and E/W winner.

Similarly, 11 tables will work well but requires 11x2=22 boards.  (We do try to achieve this but sometimes have to ‘stop short’ after 20 boards if play is slow).

In fact odd numbers of tables always work well.

Now, if you can be bothered, draw a plan of an even number of tables, say 4 (10 if you insist!). Plot yourself travelling  clockwise around them - at the same time plot the cards travelling anti-clockwise disaster - you meet the same cards again at the half-way point.   Now draw a plan with an odd number of tables, say 5.  Again plot yourself travelling as before with the cards simultaneously going the other way.  

So, to avoid the clash in the middle of the even-tabled movement we skip just before the collision point.   Not ideal - but better than playing the same cards twice?