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"Good evening, everyone. Thanks to your efforts to be nice to each other, the Club has survived another year financially intact. While some other clubs in the area, such as Cobham Heath and Kingston, have sadly gone under, we are now getting an average of 10.4 tables each Monday, compared to the same time last year when we were on 9.7. We still need around nine tables a session to break even.
"It is particularly good to see several new members joining the club, but we do need to continue to be nice to each other to keep them.
"My special thanks to all the members of committee, to our two directors, Rowena and John, and to Mike, for arriving early and setting up the furniture.
"This year we are losing three members of the committee: Vicky, Fay and Pauline. My heartfelt thanks to them for their constant services and particularly for all their work in getting the club back onto its feet after the pandemic, when several forces seemed to be acting against us.
"My especial thanks to Pauline, who has been on this journey right from the start, when we took the risk of investing in the hardware for a scoring system that no other club in the area had. Pauline has never formally been club treasurer, but as a chartered accountant, she has provided all the financial know-how we needed to navigate the minefield of annual accounts, vanishing bank branches, and local government invoicing systems. Not to mention the hassle of collecting your two pounds fifty each week. We will miss you all, and very much hope you will continue as active members of the club.
"In the place of the three, I believe we will be welcoming two women and, for the first time during my reign as Chairman, a man. This will clearly take some getting used to, but we are all very much looking forward to the arrival of Val, Christine and Adam at our next committee meeting.
"Finally we need to hand out the prizes. The Club Championship started again last August, and finished in February. But it seems it was all over in December, when Meena and Fiona notched up a highly impressive total of 10 after three first places on Club Championship nights. They still haven't told me what happened at the January session, when they came 22nd, but they had already bagged the four performances needed, and they didn't even bother turning up for the February finale. No-one else could quite catch them up: not Giovanni and Gabby on 11, or Mike, Deanne, Nigel and John on a joint 15. Anyway, well done to all of you.
"Finally, may I make a plea about opening leads. On most hands, the opening lead is the most important card played. More contracts are won, or lost, on the opening lead than on any other card. It is therefore very important that the defender can choose the opening lead with the benefit of all the information that he or she is entitled to. In particular, that defender needs to see the full auction: all the bids and all the passes should stay on the table until the opening lead has been revealed. If you play in America or on an American-owned cruise liner, this rule is different, and the bids are put in the bidding box before the opening lead is selected. But in England we leave all the bids out, and we should not try to get an advantage as declarer by putting our bids away early.
"Thank you."
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