Framlingham BC is a small friendly and relaxed Duplicate Bridge Club established in 1977.   The club is affiliated to the Suffolk Contract Bridge Association (SCBA) and to the English Bridge Union (EBU) and membership of the club automatically enrolls you as a member of the two higher parent organisations.  The annual club membership of £5.00 covers membership of the other two.  Please see 'Information' in the menu panel for further details times etc.

Monday afternoons.  This session is intended for experienced players but don't let the word 'experienced' put you off.   The average standard of Monday players is NGS 7or 8 and our two highest rated players are a modest NGS 10.  So long as you can play a solid no frills game you'll be winning trophies here in no time.

Wednesday afternoons This is a duplicate session with fewer (usually 18) boards played than on Monday afternoons.  EBU master points are not awarded because we take a more relaxed view of the laws of the game and there is a less competitive atmosphere in order to help and encourage less experienced players who wish to improve or to provide a gentle reintroduction to the game for those who may not have played for a while.  It's also there for members who seek no more than an social afternoon of bridge.  There is no obligation to move up to play on Mondays although we hope this will happen naturally as Wednesday players become more experienced.  Some Monday players also play on Wednesdays but do so in the relaxed ethos of the session.  We do not at present offer teaching at any level so you must be able to play at least a basic game in order to take part. Feel free to drop in on your own to watch a bit of play and get a feel for the club, existing club members have done just that before deciding to join us.

All visitors are welcome but you will need to come with a partner or please contact Richard Goble on 07765910637 or Glyn Button 01728 831647 and they will try to find you a partner via the Club's WhatsApp group because we almost always have a club member who is in need of one.

Framlingham BC is a small friendly and relaxed Duplicate Bridge Club established in 1977.   The club is affiliated to the Suffolk Contract Bridge Association (SCBA) and to the English Bridge Union (E ..........

You may or may not have pondered this question.  If you have then you've probably already found out and if you haven't then you probably never cared in the first place and won't be interested enough in the answer to read on .  Let's assume however that you have got this far and are wondering how the story ends.

ACOL Dear Reader is not, as the Webmaster supposed for some time, an acronym for 'Aggregated Computation of Logic' or some such snappy title (feel free to make up your own version).  It is rather disappointingly the name of village in Kent that was hijacked (the name not the village) and applied to a street in West London.  There arose in that street a bridge club which the founders rather imaginatively decided to name The ACOL Bridge Club.  As neither the village in Kent or the street in West London chose to stand out in a crowd by being identified as 'ACOL' rather than 'Acol' it remains a mystery why the bridge club decided to adopt an all upper case spelling and thereby baffle the bejesus out of subsequent generations of bridge players,

All of this happened a long time ago and eventually a bunch of toffs (it was that sort of club) having no need of the tiresome business of earning a living decided to spend a few hours of their infinite leisure to develop a systemic approach to playing the game of bridge which they called (don't all shout out the answer at once) ACOL.  It wasn't you understand the elaborate and nuanced system we play today at Framlingham with as many as six conventions, half of which we manage to get right half the time but it was a start.  Among the membership of this formative  bunch of public school types was a chap by the name of Ian McCloud who later took time out of his busy bridge schedule to become Chancellor of the the British Exchequer and another who gloried in the name of 'Skid' Simon.  I know nothing about the latter save that he wrote a book entitled 'Why You Lose at Bridge'.  It sold very well for many years which is beyond surprising as one imagines that nine out of ten players then and since could have definitively covered the same ground on a side of A5.

The ACOL club is still flourishing although it now resides just round the corner from Acol Street but retains the name.  Put in a search for 'ACOL bridge club' and you can see for yourself.

You may or may not have pondered this question.  If you have then you've probably already found out and if you haven't then you probably never cared in the first place and won't be interested enough i ..........