Release 2.19p
Address of this website

www.claygate.club

President — Mary Blundell

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/cbc/eminence/

Your Committee

Chairman — Gavin Wilson 

Treasurer — Rowena Austin 📧 rowena@claygate.club

Secretary — Fay D'Abo

Membership — Pauline Harris 📧 pauline@claygate.club

Refreshments  Julie Minards 📧 juliem@claygate.club

Refreshments  Vicky Bevan 📧 vicky@claygate.club

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/cbc/committee/
The Director team

The Director team comprises:

  • Rowena Austin
  • John Murtagh
  • Gavin Wilson
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/cbc/directing/
The Scorer team

The Scoring Team comprises:

  • Gavin Wilson

Claygate now uses a wireless scoring system called BridgePal, which runs on smartphones and tablets.  Further information about BridgePal can be found here.

20th November 2017

 

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Minutes of the Meeting of the Claygate Bridge Club Committee held at 10.00 on the 20th November at Torrington Close


Present:

Chairman: Gavin Wilson (GW)
Elected Committee Members: Yvette Barton (YB), Pauline Harris (PH), Muriel Hodder (MH), Kay Wilson (KW)
Co-opted Committee Members: none
Other Club Members: none

1. Apologies for Absence

None.

2. Confirmation of the Minutes of the Committee Meeting held on 10th April 2017

The minutes of the meeting of 3rd July 2017 were agreed and signed by the Chairman.

3. To Report on the Actioning of Items from Previous Meetings

  • 17-2Ⓐ1 PH agreed to approach KEITH WILLIAMS, of Claygate Lawn Tennis Club, for referrals at the end of his courses. PH will mention the matter to Keith at tennis. He has two fours on the go, we gather. ⓓⓞⓝⓔ
  • 17-2Ⓐ2 GW agreed to ask the council's adult education teachers for referrals. ⓞⓟⓔⓝ
  • 17-2Ⓐ3 GW agreed to ask SUE JACKSON if she could refer her alumni to Claygate. The students live too far away. ⓓⓞⓝⓔ
  • 17-1Ⓐ13 Committee members to employ Convention Cards in their own play sessions. All committee members agreed to try a bit harder to do so. The key is, having written it down once, not to throw it away — which is the natural tendency when you have recorded your system on the front of a score card. ⓓⓞⓝⓔ
  • 17-2Ⓐ4 GW to circulate the committee with details of the EBU's P2P debits of this year. ⓞⓟⓔⓝ
  • 17-2Ⓐ5 GW to send PH another copy of the EBU Invoice for the 2017 Law books. ⓓⓞⓝⓔ
  • 17-2Ⓐ6 The club does not have any contact details for Brian Barrow. GW to ask SANDRA SIMPSON if she can supply them. GW to pass what we have to PH. ⓓⓞⓝⓔ
  • 17-2Ⓐ7 GW to test out the BridgePal system at home. See item 8 further on. ⓓⓞⓝⓔ

4. Chairman's Report

GW reported on four aspects of the past quarter:

  1. The Club now had a stock of three years' worth of customised score/system cards. Concerns about petty pilferage had nudged the club towards paying a little extra over the price of the standard, uncustomised cards. 10,000 units was the minimum order quantity. After some misunderstanding about the degree of customisation available, we settled on a design that contained just our name and web address.
  2. On two Mondays, separated by just a fortnight, Elmbridge Council let us down by not opening the Day Centre at 1900 hours. On the first occasion, the Centre was not open by 1930, and we obtaineded a commitment from Elmbridge to provide us with a full rebate for the evening and for a further evening. On the second occasion, the Centre was opened by 1930, but not before several members had been sent home by an Elmbridge employee who was convinced it would not open at all.
    • 17-3Ⓐ1 MH/PH to check, when the room hire bill from Elmbridge arrives in January, that the club was awarded two freebie evenings as a result of the first debacle.
    • 17-3Ⓐ2 GW to request another freebie session from the Day Centre Manager, because of the second evening of chaos.
  3. We declined an invitation to the SCBA Chairmans Lunch, on the grounds that a free lunch and bridge session seemed an inappropriate use of members' P2P funds.
  4. Attendance feels like it is slightly down, year-on-year. We will monitor this. We believe that both local competitor clubs — Fun2PlayBridge and the Dittons — use computerised scoring on Monday evenings.

5. Treasurer's Report

PH projected that the Club is likely to make a loss this calendar/financial year. Receipts are down on last year largely because from January to October 2016, table money was £3 per member per session. Membership now stands at 107. Almost every visitor of this year has joined the club. GW thanked PH for producing the forecast.

  • 17-3Ⓐ3 GW to ask David Rotherham about previous arrangements for the club's public liability insurance cover.
  • 17-3Ⓐ4 MH/PH jointly to sign the year's financial accounts.

6. The Christmas Party

Once again, MH and YB will be in charge of the food. M&S or Waitrose will be the likely supplier of most of it. As usual, it will be a MEMBERS ONLY event, with free entry. For a change, normal duplicate pairs bridge will be played after the party.

  • 17-3Ⓐ5 GW to ask DAVID ROTHERHAM to help with the drinks again.
  • 17-3Ⓐ6 Due to sticky fingers from eating, GW is requested not to change the cards until after the Party.
  • 17-3Ⓐ7 GW to announce to the Club that normal bridge will follow the Party.
  • 17-3Ⓐ8 The Monday after this announcement, GW to circulate a clipboard register of interest, to enable YB & MH to estimate numbers.
  • 17-3Ⓐ9 GW to request that the Day Centre be opened by 1815 on the day of the Party.

7. Computerised Scoring

After acting as one of the Wyvern's scorers for nearly a year, GW came to the conclusion that Bridgemates, at more than £3,000 for a club of our size, would be a very expensive solution. He also spoke to users of the BriAn system, in which each table requires a player to bring a smartphone to record each score, but disliked the ongoing software-as-a-service payments the system entails. In his opinion, the club needs to have computerised scoring, firstly because newer members will expect it if they are graduating from Meena Samani's classes, and secondly because manual scoring after each session is a dreary, tedious data-entry task.

The committee endorsed Gavin's recommendation of the BridgePal system, which has been developed by Chislehurst Bridge Club and which is being enthusiastically embraced by a wave of clubs expanding through the Kent and Essex regions. (See http://mirgo2.co.uk/bridgepal/index.php?section=12). The software is available for free. Support is also provided for free by the developers; GW has found it to be very prompt and helpful. All you have to acquire is suitable hardware: Android tablets or phones, a Windows PC and a WiFi router.

This is the Club's budget:

Item Quantity Total Cost
6-way USB Charging Station RAVPower 2 £33.98
TP-LINK Wireless Router TL-WR841N 1 £17.99
Acer Iconia One 7 Tablet from ao.com 15 £735.00
Acer Iconia One 7 Tablet from PC World 2 £99.98
Logik Tablet Case from PC World 6 £17.88
Tablet Case from Poundland 1 £1.00
Tablet Case from Tiger 10 £30.00
Windows 10 Computer (used) from GJW 1 £60.00
TOTAL £995.83

This will change the nature of the scoring role. It will become a matter of setting up the system and handsets at the start of each evening, and helping the users — i.e. North — become familiar with the handsets, and correcting any keying errors they may make.

For the foreseeable future, the club will require North/South to continue to fill in the paper travellers after each hand. This will provide a backup in case we have a computer disaster on any evening. Several other clubs employ this approach, throwing the paper travellers away at the end of each evening as soon as the scorer confirms that the computer has successfully finished scoring the session. Each N/S pair can decide between themselves who is going to use the BridgePal handset, and who is going to record the result on the traveller.

  • 17-3Ⓐ10 GW to find at least one — preferably two — technically capable club members to help plan and support the roll-out.
  • 17-3Ⓐ11 GW to provide training to the scoring team.
  • 17-3Ⓐ12 GW to provide training to users.
  • 17-3Ⓐ13 GW to provide gentle familiarisation for everyone before launching in to the big roll-out.

8. Any Other Business

None.

9. Date of Next Meeting

The committee agreed that the next meeting should take place at 1400 on Thursday 1st February at Torrington Close.