The committee emerged from hibernation today (24th February) to hold its first meeting by Zoom.  Understandably there were exchanges about haircuts, holidays and vaccinations, but once the chairman had regained control, the committee provisionally agreed:

1. To cancel this year's AGM. It is never the highlight of the club's year, and there are no prizes to be handed out anyway.  We hope members understand.
2. To approve the annual accounts, subject to the Honorary Auditor first approving them.
    

In the absence  of any guidance from the EBU or Boris, none of the committee believed that the Club would be returning to face-to-face bridge at the Day Centre before June.

Here is an excerpt from a letter of 28th July 2020 from the President of the European Bridge League on the subject 'Revelation of cheating at online bridge events', available on the EBU website:

'The EBL has taken note of confessions made on social media by several players of having cheated repeatedly during privately organised online bridge events. Even though the events involved were not held under the auspices of the EBL, we want to make it absolutely clear that:

• the EBL strongly condemns cheating in all forms of bridge, irrespective of where it occurs;
• the EBL will support, and cooperate with, all serious efforts to combat cheating; to this end we need information to be shared among the event organisers;
• the EBL will consider action against cheats even if the offences occurred outside its immediate jurisdiction;
• the EBL strongly encourages cheats to confess - lacking a confession any sanctions will be much more severe.'

Extract from an email sent by Sam Kelly, Communications Officer at the EBU on 10th September:

'The government has just announced that starting on Monday 14th September, social gatherings of more than six people will be illegal in England. Although there will be some exceptions to this, none seem to cover the situation of any bridge clubs.  This removes any doubt there may have been in our earlier advice to clubs about whether clubs can run any face-to-face games, and makes clear that this will not be possible until such time as further changes or clarifications to the rules may be announced.'

The quarterly committee meeting which was due to be held on 17th June has been postponed until a yet-to-be-determined future date.  Too much remains unclear about the resumption of face-to-face bridge to make such a meeting worthwhile.

We hope you are all well.

A sign of these straitened times for bridge: the June edition of 'English Bridge' magazine is now available on the EBU website and will not be available in hard copy.  So do not expect it to be dropping through your letterboxes.  I have only glanced through it so far, but my eye was caught by a correspondence with Gordon Rainsford about cheating in online bridge!

Very best wishes

Gavin

Excerpt from an EBU email to club officials sent 26th June:

'The government announced on 23rd June that it will be relaxing the social distancing requirements with effect from 4th July. This has led some clubs and other bridge organisers to wonder if they will be able to start re-opening at that time.

'The government advice does say that social clubs and community centres will be able to re-open, although it says that casinos will not. However, there are a number of requirements in order to be allowed to re-open: apart from keeping a record of everyone who attends, people are still required to stay 2m apart if possible and otherwise to keep at least 1m apart along with having further mitigations like wearing face masks or having perspex barriers between people.

'Although many clubs might have the space to keep tables 2m apart, the standard bridge-table size seats players no further than 60cm from their opponents. We have been unable to uncover clear and authoritative advice that having, for instance, a perspex screen across the table, is sufficient to mitigate this. Because of this, we are unable currently to advise that even with mitigating actions, bridge clubs can generally re-open to run face-to-face games that comply with the regulations.'

Thus the EBU makes it clear that Claygate Bridge Club should not re-open for the time being.  However, watch this space.

Gavin

Following a recommendation in Tuesday's Times, I spent 20 minutes watching the likes of Andrew Robson and Zia Mahmood playing through a couple of bridge hands in a free recording at  http://newtricksbridge.club/watch.html . Similar in style to the way that the BBC2's 'Master Game' tackled chess in the 1970s, it features understandable expert commentary while each bid and card is played, together with a narration supplied by each player afterwards to give you an idea of what was going on in their mind. (It was comforting to see one grandmaster make a hash of the bidding on the second hand because he had mixed a spade in with the clubs in his hand.) There are a number of episodes available.

Gavin

REMOVE: 3-DEC-19

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I am very sorry to have to announce this, but Claygate Bridge Club is now closed until further notice. Yesterday afternoon, the committee decided to call an SGM at the start of the evening session to implement the government's advice regarding coronavirus. The mood of the members who attended was that we had no choice but to suspend the club's activities until further notice. We then had a final session of five-and-a-half tables before the enforced break.

We hope to resume activities at the earliest opportunity.

Hope to see you all very soon.

Gavin

REMOVE: ASAP

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If you cannot attend on the date you have been allocated, please try to organise a swap, and inform the Secretary, kay@claygater.uk, of the swap. If you need help finding a swap, please contact the Secretary.

In Order of First Name

REMOVE: never

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We play Duplicate Pairs each Monday, except Bank Holidays.

The club is affiliated to the EBU, so every session attracts Masterpoints for the highest-ranked players on the night.

Play starts at 7.30 pm, but all players must arrive by 7.20 pm.

A session normally consists of 24 boards, and it should be over by 10.30 pm.

Visitors are very welcome.

We always play at Claygate Centre for the Community, Elm Road, Claygate KT10 0EH.

Commonly called the 'Day Centre', its phone number is: 01372 463476    Map  

The cost per player, which covers both play and refreshments, is:

£2.00 for members, and £3.00 for visitors.

As the club is approaching its limit of 110 members, we may soon have to introduce a waiting list for membership applications.  

REMOVE: never

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