“Candleford” is the name used by Flora Thompson when referring to Buckingham in her Lark Rise books. The name serves to distinguish us from the existing Buckingham Bridge Club.

Candleford Bridge provides bridge in the daytime. Some sessions are traditional duplicate bridge, around 20 boards (depending on the number of tables) to give about 2½ hours of play. We usually provide a host at the regular sessions, so you can still play even if you turn up without a partner. We also run review sessions: fewer boards - usually 12 to 15 - followed by a discussion of the hands and what happened at the tables. Events in different formats, such as Swiss Pairs, turn up from time to time.  Look at the Calendar to see which kind of session is coming up, and whether there will be a host.

All traditional sessions use randomly-dealt boards. Some review sessions use selected or prepared deals to explore themes in bidding (such as competing over a 1NT opening bid) or play (such as counting the hand). The discussion should include something of interest for all players who can enjoy a club evening but don’t yet consider themselves to be experts.

In the discussion, we project the hands and other details onto a screen, and you receive a print of the hands for making your own notes. You need to come as a pair to get the most out of the review sessions. For that reason we don’t provide a host for review sessions.

Candleford Bridge provides a scoring tablet at each table prepared with BriAn software. There is no need for you to do anything other than enter the scores etc, but if you wish you can use your own copy of the BriAn software on your smartphone or your own tablet. You will then be able to review the deals after the event using the BriAn facilities.

And of course the results, including the hand details, are posted on BridgeWebs.

Candleford Bridge is affiliated to the EBU (through the Oxfordshire Bridge Association) in order to help support the national bridge infrastructure and the national teams. We award EBU master points for qualifying sessions, which are mostly the sessions based on randomly-dealt boards. Sessions using prepared boards do not qualify for master points and do not count in your NGS grading, but every session does count towards your EBU magazine points.