Our annual Ladies vs Men teams match takes place on Sunday 10 August - it is a friendly game with a break in the middle for tea - as in previous years we will apply an NGS based handicap to make it a fair match - last year the men won whereas the year before it was the ladies who prevailed - the event is in aid of the President's Charity (Chester Aid to the Homeless) - for £20 we can again provide a glass of prosecco/wine as well as tea and bridge and a contribution to the charity - for further info click here 

Our County Association is running a Swiss Teams event at Deva on Thursday 3 July. It starts at 7pm and the TD is David Smith. The County intend it to be a friendly event - it isn't green pointed. As such it is an opportunity for any Deva members wanting to try teams bridge, as well as players who participate in Deva Teams and Championship Teams competitions.

Further information and entry is on the county website. 

Hi everyone, monthly prize winners for April & May are:

Well done all of you.

We had 14 pairs competing in our annual Mixed Pairs competition on Thursday 15 May. Philip Waring directed the session for us and here are photos of him with the winners (Dee & David Smith), and with runners-up (Dawn Taylor & Mark Thompson), and also a photo of the 3rd place pair (Christine Hughes & John Gorman). Congratulations to all of you!

Our Ladies' and Men's pairs competitions took place in the club on Thursday 17 April. We had 10 pairs of ladies and 9 of men, which meant that both competitions played the same movement but with the men having forty winks (or a rest) during a sit-out round. Congratulations to the winning ladies, Christine Hughes and Anne Dodd, and to the winning men, Chris Pope and Mark Weeks. Runners up were Sally Banks & Annie Mead and Terry Jones & David Armstrong, and 3rd place were Janice Meads & Sheila Banham and Jerry Hopkins & Philip Waring. Here are photos of the top 3 places for each.

Our mixed pairs competition takes place on Thursday 15 May - for info and to enter click here.

Congratulations to the following Deva members who gained a master point promotion in March. 

It was wonderful to have 17¹/₂ tables for Wednesday afternoon's EBU Simultaneous Pairs event. As those there will have realised, we didn't expect that number and so had to deal a 2nd set of hands at the start and get more tables out and resolve an issue with an unresponsive BridgeMate. Thank you to those helping resolve these issues and apologies to all for the slow start.

When things did start we had a full session. As usual for these events the rankings scored nationally and on the EBU website (nationalresults) are different to our local results at Deva (localresults). Congratulations to Bernard and Gill Farrell who came 10th out of 411 pairs nationally with a score of 67.8%. We had 4 pairs scoring 60% or above:

When looking at the national results you can click on "overall results" to see the full results (i.e. not filtered on Deva Bridge Club), and also access the commentary and analysis on the individual hands and results.

Congratulations to Stewart Hart who won the Fearn Cup Final yesterday (Sunday). The final involved 20 players and was a tough battle fought over 38 boards, with a well earned break for a finger buffet lunch. Here is a photo of Stewart, being presented with his prize by our President, and holding the cup. The other photo shows the runner-up (Annie Mead) and 3rd place (Richard Tresias). This is the last of this year's major championships.  The Individual Champion, Pairs Champions and Teams Champions will now have their names engraved on the Boards/Cups, and the rest of us can hope to do better next year!

Many thanks to all of you you kindly brought in food items and additional donations for Chester Aid to the Homeless (CATH). We (David, Susan and Sheena) took them to the their centre opposite the Grosvenor Museum on Monday. They were very appreciative of both £1,116 cash and the food items. The cash amount includes money we raised from the Chester Bowl competition last October as well as from Presidents Day. Here's a photo of us handing over a cheque to Rob (CATH CEO), and a photo of our donated food items.

Our county association is holding its annual John Armstrong Swiss Pairs competition at Deva on Saturday 17 May - starting time is 11am. As it is so convenient for us we hope for a good attendance from Deva members. It is an excellent opportunity for a good game of bridge and a good way to pick up some of those elusive green points. Further information is on the county website - this link will take you there.

The Championship Pairs final was held on Wednesday 19 March and the winners were Simon Anderson and Alan Sharples who will now have their names added to the championship board in the club. Runners up were Bob Pitts and Peter Kaufmann (who were just 3 match points behind) with Alastair Crawford and Frank White in 3rd place (another 3 match points lower). Congratulations to Simon and Alan - they are in the centre of the photo below holding the Shield. The runners up and 3rd place are to the left and right.

President's Day took place last Sunday (16 March) and was a charity event in aid of the local charity Chester Aid to the Homeless (CATH). We arrived to be presented with two colourful bridge quizzes (identifying UK bridges and bridge themed dingbats) and a raffle, and followed that with 24 hands of bridge and a meal. We raised £475 for CATH which is a tremendous result. Winners N/S were Philip Waring & Mark Weeks and E/W were Colin Bate & Barbara Davies - they can be seen in the 1st 2 photos below being presented their prizes by the Club President. The next 2 photos are the runners up each way. The last photo shows the club room with the contest underway and, in the foreground, the food collection box for CATH. The collection box, which remains in the club until Monday 24 March, has been filled several times over - many thanks for contributions.

The Fearn Cup Ladder ran for the 5 months October to February and ended with last Friday's afternoon pairs. And so now, with some "fanfare", we can announce the winners and master point awards. The top position was won by Jerry Hopkins with Haydn Roberts coming 2nd - congratulations to them both. The top eight places gain master points and are shown in the table below:

The full ladder can be seen by clicking here. The ladder determines who plays in the Fearn Cup Final on Sunday April 6th. We will soon be contacting qualifiers by email to confirm their place.