| April's Promotions |
Congratulations to our members who got their promotions in April
1 Star Premier Regional Master: Karen Jones
2 Star Premier Master: David Murray
1 Star Premier Master: John Berry
Area Master: Linda Wood
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| NICKO |
Congratulations!
The pre covid CHBC team has reached the final of the NICKO winning last night. The team is: David Barton, Michael Byrne, John Holland and Gary Hyett.
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| IAN PENDLEBURY |
IAN PENDLEBURY
We are shocked and saddened to hear that Ian Pendlebury has died at the age of 72. Ian was a very active bridge player when he was younger, reaching the rank of Grand Master and winning a couple of national competitions. He played for Staffordshire in county events and in the Manchester league.
Ian was a stalwart at Bramhall Village Bridge Club for many years and was a very supportive co-founder, host and tournament director of the Monday afternoon duplicate initiative. During Covid lockdowns, he declined to play bridge on-line and was pleased to return to F2F at Bramhall last July: he played every Tuesday evening, often winning. Ian was always very interested to discuss the activities of B&CHBC and its plans for the future: we will miss him.
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| MCBA AGM |
MCBA AGM
The annual general meeting of the MCBA will be held on Thursday 26th May at 19.00 online on zoom.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89662701674?pwd=VUg5Sm1VZkR3eXFGaWFSK0pCMkFldz09
All welcome.
<------- Documents for the AGM can be found on the Documents Tab at the left.
There are several vacancies most notably tournament secretary, but also schools liaison and vice chair. There will also be elections for match secretary and selection committee.
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| Bank Holiday Bridge |
The Monday afternoon & evening duplicates will take place as usual on May 2nd
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| EBU Northern Easter Bridge Festival |
Congratulations to Alec Smalley who won both the Swiss Pairs, with Barbara Lewis; and the teams with Tom Slater, Jeff Smith and Rhona Goldenfield
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| News Letter |
The centre has been busy in recent months with both F2F bridge and on-line, and members playing in county, national and international events.
Members are doing well in the MCBA leagues and the NICKO and were well represented in the recent Green Pointed Pairs. There are still places available in the Ben Franks that is being held at Bramhall on April 10th and promises to be an excellent day’s bridge.
We are presently watching with great interest and excitement the World Bridge Championships in Italy with club and Manchester based players in the England teams. Congratulations to Michael Byrne on reaching the quarter finals - but commiserations on narrowly losing the 96 board match against one of the pre-tournament favourites. We are now supporting the English Ladies and Norway Open teams in the semi-finals.
Easter Opening
There will be no bridge on Good Friday April 15th but we will be running duplicates as usual on Easter Monday April 18th – F2F at Bramhall in the afternoon and RealBridge on Monday evening, and F2F at Bramhall on Tuesday April 19th.
Moving Forward
The centre’s committee met on March 29th to review recent months and to plan for the future.
We are continuing with 3 F2F duplicates in the club and Monday evening RealBridge. Table money for all sessions is £2.50 for members: for RealBridge we will collect in June for the weeks in April, May and June.
We are planning some new activities to take place at Bramhall, primarily on Thursdays - afternoon and evening.
Before Covid, we ran some special events on Thursday evening such as teams and club competitions and plan to re-start these events after the league season has ended. We will also start a regular F2F session of supervised play that will include an introductory talk and/or review of hands after play, this is aimed at improvers and will be on Thursday afternoon.
Further, we are looking to introduce some teaching for beginners as soon as it can be arranged.
We are pleased to see so many of you who have returned to F2F bridge and hope that more of you will venture into the centre during the spring and summer.
Thanks as always to our hard-working committee and members who contribute to the successful running of the Centre.
Regards
Alec and Steve
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| World Bridge Championships |
Congratulations!
The World Team Championships have now concluded and Europe won all competitions! Congratulations to our local Bronze Medalist Catherine Draper as a member of the English Woman team!
The English team in the Open played well, but suffered a defeat in the Quarter finals.
The winners of the different classes were:
Bermuda Bowl (Open): Switzerland
Venice Cup (Woman): Sweden
d'Orsi Trophy (Senior): Poland
Wuhan Cup (Mixed Teams): France
See (WBF ) for all the results and Bulletins
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| Michael "Houdini" Byrne |
Michael "Houdini" Byrne
England was knocked out in the quarter finals of Bermuda Bowls. Even so, they produced a lot of great bridge, and the first set of 16 boards is a list they, as David Bird said, should frame. The most spectacular hand was this one:
Dealer: East
Game all
North
♠ 109
♥ 86
♦ QJ1065
♣ J1053
West East
♠ AQ765 ♠ J4
♥ Q9 ♥ A10743
♦ K82 ♦ 943
♣ A87 ♣ Q42
South
♠ K832
♥ KJ52
♦ A7
♣ K96
West North East South
Dyke Zimmermann Byrne Piedra
pass 1♣
1♠ pass 1N pass
3N(!) all pass
The fist two bids are text book. Michael’s 1N is within the realm of reality, but Dyke’s 3N is taking us into Alec in Wonderland. When you bid as if you have stolen the pack, you need to play really well. The commentators said that perhaps Kieran knew how good a declarer his partner was which was why he stretched to this contract. But many would not have found a bid with Michael’s hand. They really were bidding the spots off the cards.
South led the ♥2 and dummy’s Queen won, North discarding the 8, and Houdini followed with the 4 from hand. There’s not an avalanche of top tricks for Michael, but both the Spade and the Heart suit can provide some tricks. At trick two Michael led a small Spade from dummy to his Jack, and South won with the King. South now continued with the Heart King and Houdini dropped the 10. Later when I praised Michael he said “It was fun. I knew he was going to fall for it”.
South now had been painted the picture of Michael having ♥ A104 and Zimmerman having ♥ 8763, so he continued with the Heart Jack - all Houdini needed! Michael won in hand, cashed his remaining Hearts and led a Diamond towards dummy’s King. South ducked and the King won. Ace, Queen and another Spade endplayed South to play away from K9. Houdini ending up with 9 tricks and 600. No other pair had been close to bidding game!
I won’t advocate their bidding, but Michaels play was stunning! Thanks for all you gave us!
In the replay the Swiss played in 1♠ for 6 tricks!
Espen Gisvold
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| NICKO |
Congrats to the teams of Michael Byrne & Neil Thomas which are through to the 4th round of the 2021-2022 NICKO competition
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| Frank Wetton |
Frank Wetton passed away on March 9th. He was a regular player at Cheadle Hulme BC, played only a couple of times on-line during Covid and was looking forward to returning to F2F bridge. Condolences to Brenda, and Frank's family
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| Club Champions |
EBU has just released their report of Club Champions (based on Master Points won) and our club champion was Howard Stubbings with 1344 Master Points in 2021. Congratulations! Full report HERE
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| European Mixed Championships |
Congratulations to Michael Byrne who, with Sarah Bell, has qualified - after 3 weekends and 144 boards - to play for England in the European Mixed Team Championships.
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| RealBridge & Apple/Ipad |
Apple users only on RealBridge - There have been some recent audio problems with Apple products due to changes made by Apple in iOS 15. Below are the patches to fix the problem and a help line to RealBridge if you have problems.
Players who have iPads, and who may have upgraded to iOS 15, please follow the instructions here:
https://realbridge.online/media-support-ios-15.html
Note: If they are still on iOS 14 or earlier, they do not need to do anything. We suggest that they should not upgrade to iOS 15 now – it is sensible to wait for a few weeks to see if there are any other issues.
Players who have Macs, and who may have upgraded to macOS Monterey, to follow the instructions here:
https://realbridge.online/media-support-macos-monterey.html
Note: If they are not on macOS Monterey, they do not need to do anything. We suggest that they should not upgrade to Monterey now – it is sensible to wait for a few weeks to see if there are any other issues.
For these issues, if you have any difficulties or are unsure about the procedure, please contact support@realbridge.onlinefor assistance. We are here to help, so please do get in touch.
Contacting RealBridge
If you have a problem during a session, please call us on the number below. We are happy to take your call, and we want people to contact us for help. Normal hours are 7am to 11pm UK, but for emergencies you can call outside these times.
For less urgent questions, please email us.
Our email address is: support@realbridge.online
Main number for contacting RealBridge (including immediate support issues):
+44 (0) 794 232 2209
Alternative number: +44 (0) 747 555 7651
Regards Alec
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| Grand Master |
Congratulations to member, Rodney Lighton, who has achieved the notable ranking of Grand Master and joins 12 other members of the Centre who have reached this milestone. Gary Hyett, Jeffrey Smith, John Holland, Michael Byrne, Rhona Goldenfield, Raymond Semp, Irving & Joy Blakey, Pauline Lang, Ian Pendlebury, Joyce White and John Roberts.
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| Online Duplicates |
Online Bridge - We plan to continuing with online bridge for members, with the club paying UMS to the EBU, and the hosting fees. Visitors are welcome to play, and if they plan to visit again they will be asked to pay a one-off fee of £20 for on-line membership of the club.
RealBridge - Monday evenings at 7.30pm. You do not need to register, just click on the appropriate link in the "Login RealBridge" on the right of our home page.
Results - The results are all on this website together with the ‘leader boards’ to be found under Competitions in the Menu.
TD's - Our TDs are all volunteers: Espen, Victor, Mary, Alec, Paul & Steve
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| Privacy Notice |
All private information we hold on our members are gathered, stored used and safeguarded in acordance with GDPR rules as outlined in our Privacy Policy Document: Privacy Policy
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