Starting this week on Wednesday at 7pm, there will be a new weekly evening session for all Gentle Bridge Players See more ...

Thank you to our members for a successful event with 42 pairs on BBO and 13 pairs on RealBridge.

Members will be saddened to learn of the death of Sybil Davies.

Apologies to those who entered the Tuesday 1345 tournament 15th December. Due to problems with BBO the session had to be abandoned. If you paid for the event, BBO will refund your money.

Weak 2s

Splinter Bids    Deals Comments

Over the Easter weekend all online bridge is running as usual. In addition, GCBA is running an Easter Handicap Pairs on Monday evening at 6pm - to enter email: easter21@gcba.org.uk

CBC will run a club heat for the 2021 Garden Cities event on RealBridge. Entries by Monday 22nd March. All club members are welcome to join. Click for more information.

Should you wish to make a donation in Sybil's memory, send a cheque to the Funeral Director, or online here for Cleeve Common Trust and here for Cancer Research UK.

Make a donation...

Thank you to all for your support in a difficult 2020. Subscription renewal is now overdue for online play in 2021. The payment details can be found on the Club Noticeboard (above). Please make belated payments as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our SIMS event on 10 November. We raised a magnificent £611.

Proposal for 2020 membership survey with focus on online tournaments.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION - Please do not fill in yet until questions have been finalised. You will receive an email when the survey is ready/

Members of CBC who knew John Whittenbury and were going to attend his wake on Monday 14th September 2020 at Stroud Cricket Club (by the Ryford Industrial Estate on the Ebley bypass), please note this has been CANCELLED due to new governament guide lines. This follows Church and crematorium services held in private (following Government Guidelines) in the morning.

Good Morning to all our members who enjoy  playing on BBO

Social Sunday Afternoon Bridge to start on Sundays from 22nd November at 2.30pm. 

Special price $2.

I invite you to play bridge and share a cup of tea with all our bridge club friends.  Malcolm and Hylary have kindly offered to host  a new game on BBO where you will be able to actually see and talk to the 4 people sitting at your table.  It is particularly aimed at those of us  who miss having a chat and a gossip both during the play and the teabreak.

How are we going to do this? 

• We ask you to log in to BBO in the normal way - go to competitive/all tournaments/chelt. And look for Cheltenham Social Bridge starting at 14.30 on Sunday 22nd November.
• Join the game with a partner or put your name in the partnership box. After the special introductory session it will cost you $4 (You will not be able to elect to play with a robot)
• Then log in to ZOOM using the link below.  (This will be the same link each week).  Come into the ZOOM about 10 minutes before the game so you can say hello to everyone.
• If you can, organise your screen so you can see both the BBO and Zoom screen.  But don’t worry if you can’t as we will help you with that. Alternatively, if you have two devices, you can use one for BBO, and the other for Zoom.
• When Malcolm and Hylary start the game, which will be played in exactly the same way as always, they will organise the Zoom to show the 4 people sitting at your table by putting you in a break-out room. This will happen automatically, but you may have to agree to ‘join’ the room.
• All you have to do now is play bridge and have a social game with the 4 people sitting at your table.  At the end of the round you will be moved.  We aim to play about 20 boards.

So all you have to do is to be on BBO as usual and log into Zoom.  We will do everything else.

At half time we will have a tea break, of about 20 minutes, on the ZOOM - you will be taken back there automatically.  We encourage you all to have a  tea and a biscuit in your hand and enjoy a chat.  This will be our "Show us your Mug" moment!

On 22nd November we realise that it will be new to everyone but we will still have fun and I look forward to seeing you. We will welcome your feedback too.

If you have any queries do ask me by replying to this email.  You could have a practice getting both screens up on the computer before the Sunday.

Best wishes 

Judy

Judith Sanis. CTD

You will have received the Zoom meeting link and Meeting ID by email recently but if you don't have it, the details are available in the Members Area here.

A great turnout of 26 tables for this National SIMS event held on BBO on Wednesday 13th January.

National Results

Expert Commentary

Karen Monaghan, 400589, ksmonaghan@outlook.com

Christine May, 101812,

Ken Haines, 432618, ken.haines813@hotmail.co.uk

Sue Wickendon, 521733, wicksue@hotmail.co.uk

Margaret Blewett, 406456, (partnering Malcolm Green)

Richard Roberts, 435816, richard@dialcottage.plus.com

Val Clarke, 470242, c/o Richard Roberts

Please reply to judithsanis@gmail.com

Every Thursday, Open to All, No Robots, Standby provided. Join from 6.30pm for a 7pm start.

Try the free Test Session at any time to test your video and sound, play 4 sample boards.

What is RealBridge?

How to play...

Proposal for 2020 membership survey with focus on online tournaments.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION - Draft 2 with comments incorporated

To go in the covering email

(Caroline) Should say that it will only take a few minutes to complete.

(Linda) We should offer help to those who may struggle with the digital form - offer to phone them and go through the questions, fill in the form on their behalf?

(Patrick) We should not raise expectations - perhaps state that we have limited resource?

Form Changes

(Malcolm) Removed question re. 9x2 or 6x3 as it is too simplistic and should be left to Director.

(Andrew) Added option to put in a non-CBC pair if we have a half-table - they may be unreliable and not stay for the whole tournament though!

(Linda) Added a question to section B to ask them if they would like some help to find a partner.

(Lesley) Added a question to solicit comments on specific exisiting individual sessions

(Steve Bunker) Added a question about online Bridge with video and sound links

(Steve Bunker) Added a question to ask about other competition formats

(Steve Bunker) Sorry, I don't know the minimum number of boards for MPs - the current 18 boards was chosen to give a duration of 2 hours

(Steve Bunker) Re. Acol only session. I don't know if this will be attractive to our members, hope to find out. I suspect not as I see many 5CM pairs in our events.

(Steve Bunker) Re. the suggested competition formats. I added a generic question but you might want to discuss specific formats with Judy?

(Steve Bunker) Re. training sessions. You make a good point. We have Learners sessions already, but online lectures/seminars etc for mature players would be good too but probably outside of scope of this survey? Perhaps you could raise with Patrick (GCBA) or Hugh (CBC)?

(Patrick) Re-phrased question re. new sessions to relate to increased likelihood of attending

(Patrick) Re-phrased the questions re. start time to relate to increased likelihood of attending

(Patrick) Added questions to ask specifically about a short 12 board session, and a longer 24-board session + break

(Patrick) Added more options for the Leaderboard question (cumulative competitions)

(Patrick) Added question related to ease of use of website

(Patrick) Added 'no strong feeling' option to UNDO question

(Pauline) Added question to each section to ask whether play is social, competitive, (intellectual), all

(Pauline) Added an extra question after 'new sessions' to ask if there are any others.

(Pauline) Deleted the question about the match fees as we will always charge the minimum we need to.

(Pauline) I have numbered the questions.

(Pauline) Added explanation of the red asterisk

(Martin) Added clarification to UNDO question, only applies to Open (competitive) sessions. For Gentle and Learners sessions, we will allow UNDOs.

(Martin) Added option to allow UNDOs but with opponents allowed to reject. TD arbitration.

Thank you to all for participating in the survey. The results will be analysed to improve our programme next year, Click here to see the results.

Children In Need at Cheltenham Bridge Club

Cheltenham Bridge Club is holding a Simultaneous Pairs, in aid of Children in Need, on Wednesday Evening 11th November at 19.30.  This will be on BBO and is organised by Ecats. Clubs from all over the country will join in so you will be able to see your local and national result.  And, most importantly, we can do our bit for Children Need.  Hand commentaries will be online after the event.  Our director will be Sarah Amos from the EBU.

We will not be charging an entry fee on BBO but will collect all the money by asking you to send it directly to the club account. We ask you to pay a total of £7.00 for each player.  This is £3.50 for the table money and £3.50 for the Children in Need supplement.

Payments and Donations

All payments should be made to the Club main account, Cheltenham Bridge Club,

• Sort code 40-17-53
• Account no 01572253,
• Reference CiN

NOTE: Some members paid for an Autumn EBU Sims event on 6 October, which was aborted.  If you did there is no need for you to pay the table money for this Sims event. You will need to pay for the Sims element in full (£3.50 on this occasion) or top up your Sims payment by a further £1.75 if you paid the supplement for the aborted Sims game.

We hope as many of our members as possible will join us on this occasion and make it a record entry for our contribution to Children in Need.

Money Raised Nationally

Click on  https://www.ecatsbridge.com/sims/default.asp  to see the national running total so far, and details of individual club allocation. If you wish to make an additional donation, that would be wonderful - please click here: How to make a donation

National Results and Expert Commentaries

https://www.ecatsbridge.com/sims/results.asp?eventid=003633

Congratulations to St.Albans Bridge Club for their victory.
Click here for match results

Full national results and a download of the commentary on the hands are available here:

Please use this list to find members' usernames. THIS LIST IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY - it is not an entry form for any competition, and you only need to add your name once. The list is created by members themselves using the form below. Only answer for the websites that you use and leave others blank. If you need to update or amend anything, just fill in the form again, and your older entry will be removed in time. If you wish to remove your details completely, please contact Steve at stevebetteley.cbc@gmail.com.

Tip: To find someone quickly, click on the 'Surname' header to re-sort the list alphabetically!

Social Sunday Afternoon Bridge is to start on Sundays from 22nd November at 2.30pm on BBO with Zoom. Special price $2. All are welcome.
Click for Details

Thank you to Ro for her wonderful service to the club as Chairman for the past 3 years, and welcome to new Chairman Hugh Wilkinson seen here with Ro at the AGM.

Congratulations to Annecy Bridge club for their victory over Cheltenham last month. The full results are here.

On Thursday 9th July 13.00 we are running a Kidney Research charity event. This will be a national simultaneous pairs event and hand records will be available. The usual 4 BB$ fee will apply but we ask that you donate £3 to the charity (click here).

Old news ...

Please note that Standby positions for all sessions are now shown on the Session Rotas menu button.

• If a session has no Standby listed, then no standby is provided for this session.
   
• If a session has the Standby position shown as 'Wanted', then there is no standby currently available, but any member may volunteer to be standby by clicking the 'Standby Wanted' icon.
   
• Please note that you may move the calendar to display different months by clicking the right or left arrows at the top of the calendar.

Members will be sadden to learn of the death of David Wilson who died earlier in the week. The funeral will be on Wednesday, 2nd October at Cheltenham Crematorium (new chapel) at 12.30pm. Afterwards at the Civil Service Club, Tewkesbury Road.

CBC was pleased to welcome Tony Cherrett and his partner Christine Attwood as guests of honour in Saturday morning's 10am session to raise money for the education of Kenyan schoolchildren. Please support this worthy cause. Full details on the Caterham Bridge club website.

This first run of this event on BBO started on Monday 30th March, and 168 teams entered. There are players we know scattered across teams, but two Cheltenham teams also : Kwatra in  Div Three and Seymour in Div Ten.

The next instance of the league starts on Monday 27th April and the last date for entries is Friday 17th.  There is still time to get yourself organised (and late entries might be accepted anyway).  It involves an 8-board match every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1800 (unless you arrange otherwise) and you can have more than four in your team. It's a good competitive game, and you will be slotted into a division based on your NGS rankings.

Congratulations to David and Wendy Lewis who won the 12th CBC Cafe Bridge event held at Lilley Brook Golf Club on 28 February.  70 players enjoyed the event.  Proceeds of £180 have been used to plant up the flower beds in the rear car park.  The organisers are now working towards another event in the summer

The National Inter Club Knockout (Nicko) is due to start soon.  Entries must be received by 21st November.  The club will enter teams and will pay half the £72 entry fee.  This is a prestigious event and if you would like to consider representing CBC please get in touch with Judy - judithsanis@gmail.com

Thank you to our generous members for a record 27 table turnout for this year's Children in Need simultaneous pairs.
Well done Cheltenham!
How to pay or donate
Money Raised
National Results

Welcome to the largest and most successful bridge club in Gloucestershire, and the 5th most popular in the country by number of player sessions (2018/2019).

Visitors are most welcome to attend our regular duplicate sessions and should arrive early. If it is a special event please check with us before travelling a long distance.

If you are new to Duplicate Bridge and are looking for lessons or the opportunity to practise and improve in friendly, supervised games click on the Learn to Play menu button.

If you are an experienced Duplicate player looking for a game or thinking of joining the club, click on the Information menu button to see our Club Programme and Membership details.

Details of the regular sessions can be found by clicking on the Sessions and Calendar menu button.

Please click here to contact the club