Grattan Endicott, Hon. President of M&CBA died peacefully on 25^th April aged 97. Though not seen much at the bridge table in recent years, Grattan was a fine player who won many prestigious events both locally and nationally including the Gold Cup. He was a long standing member of Liverpool bridge club and his name features frequently on the honour boards displayed on the walls of the playing rooms. He was also extremely experienced in matters of finance and administration and served very capably for a number of years as a director and also treasurer of the EBU. He also served on the EBU Laws & Ethics committee for over a decade and made significant contributions to the rules governing the game of bridge both nationally and internationally.

Congratulations to Chris Randles and Mark Davies of Deva who won the Inaugural County J High Swiss Pairs. 

The result was confirmed following the conversion of BBO Total (Cross) IMPs (which are shown on the results page) to The Standard Victory Point scale. Michael Scott and Ian Robinson (Formby) were 2nd and a scratch partnership of Robert Hunt (Deva) and Peter Middlehurst were 3rd with Deva's Jane Campion and Stewart Hart just behind in 4th place. Just 6 VP separated the top 4.

Results shown in the Results Calendar link.

This event took place online on Sunday 7th March with play on Realbridge. The number of teams entering was disappointingly small perhaps due to competition from other online events and instead of Swiss was run as an all play all event. The clear winners were John Hampson, Laurence Stone, Chris Pope & Andy Prothero and many congratulations are due to them. In second place were Colin Humphrey, Dan Miller, Jeremy Stanforth & John Dearing. Full results are available by clicking on the results tab on the left side of the home page and then selecting Realbridge records.
Thanks once again to Adam Wiseberg for acting as TD and event administrator.

The Waterworth Cup was played over 44 boards on Saturday 20th February

Congratulations to the winners  Chris Pope & Andy Prothero (64.18%)

2nd place Matt Foster & John Hampson (59.44%)

3rd place Laurence Stone & David Smith (54.65%)

The first three pairs will all go forward to represent the County in the Corwen Trophy

11 groups representing clubs from Wirral & Cheshire competed for this trophy in a multiple teams format on Saturday 23rd Jan 2021. We were sorry to see no representation from clubs north of the River Mersey this year but these are strange and difficult times. Many congratulations to team Madeley from Bebington Bridge Club who were the eventual winners. Full results are displayed on the results tab.
This was our first trial as a county with running an event on the Realbridge platform and was a great success with very positive feedback from all taking part. Thanks are due to our TD and Realbridge expert Adam Wiseberg for running this event very efficiently and competently.

Chris Raymond
M&CBA chairman.

25/01/2021

LADY CONNELL UPDATE

The final of the Lady Connell 2019-2020 was played on BBO on 19^th December between teams captained by Ted Reveley and Colin Humphrey. The Lady Connell is our County Championship teams event. Congratulations to Ted’s team, who also won the event last year – Ted Reveley, Stuart Matthews, Bill Niccol and Alan Stephenson. Commiserations to the losing finalists – Colin Humphrey, Richard Alcock, Daniel Miller and Christopher Raymond.

The Lady Connell event normally starts in September, with the final usually being played by early May the following year. In this difficult year, when face to face bridge shut down abruptly in March, the event was progressing as planned. The later stages of the competition have taken some time to complete, as certain of our competitors familiarised themselves with online bridge. Many thanks to all the teams who made the effort to complete the event online. The decision was taken to suspend the Plate event, the Cheshire Salver, a knock out event for teams who had lost their first match in the main event.

As the 2019-20 event has taken so long to complete, your tournament committee has decided not to run the Lady Connell as a Knock-out teams of 4 event  this season. It is unlikely that we could complete the event online by May, in order to determine which team will represent our county in the Pachabo Cup, usually held in June. Instead we plan to hold the Lady Connell in the 2021-22 season and hope at that time to be able to offer participants the choice of playing online, or face to face, by mutual agreement between captains, subject of course to Government guidelines.

There is every likelihood that the EBU will relax their rules to allow the winners and /or the losers of the 2019-20 Lady Connell to be put forward as Merseyside & Cheshire’s representatives for the 2021 Pachabo Cup. It is not clear yet whether this will be played online or F2F, but at this stage, online looks most likely.

Your tournament committee will also consider, at it’s next meeting, early in the New Year, whether we might, for one year only ( hopefully ) run a Lady Connell substitute event online, either in multiple teams or Swiss teams format. This will depend on whether the EBU will allow the use of our license in this way.

24/12/2020

This competition, which was postponed from earlier this year, was held online on BBO on Sunday 15th November. This format proved to be a great success attracting entries from over 80 pairs including some of international calibre. Many congratulations to the winners Julie & Steve Abley. For a full list of scores and placings please check the results tab.

On behalf of the county I would like to acknowledge the work of Laurence Stone & Dan Miller in planning this event and to offer particular thanks to Adam Wiseberg for not only acting as TD but also taking on much of the admin burden around entry arrangements.

Sadly but realistically it is still likely to be many months before face to face play is again possible and we therefore hope to run more online events in the early part of 2021. Keep a watch on the website for more details!

Christopher Raymond

MCBA chairman

17/11/2020

Congratulations to Laurence Stone and John Hampson on winning the Grattan Endicott Cup at the Merseyside Bridge Centre.

08/02/2020