Message from Paddy Murphy on behalf of North Wales Bridge Association:

Please note the above events:

• Open to any bridge players from any bridge union/country/county/club/ability 
• It will be running in the gaps between the EBU Wednesday night leagues so will not clash with this event.
• No necessity to play on both nights. Green points awarded for both nights and overall.

https://www.bridgewebs.com/nwba/

On Saturday 15th August we have A, B & C teams taking part in the 2nd round of the Northern Bridge League. This event is  for teams of eight & runs over 4 weekends during the summer / autumn. Use this Realbridge link  to watch our teams taking part ( via delayed kibitzing & starting at approximately 10.50). 

https://kibitz.realbridge.online/

Round 1 of the Northern Bridge League was held on Saturday 11^th July where our three county teams had mixed fortunes. In the A division we finished top on 61 & 6 VP’s ahead of last year’s winners Scotland. Once again, our best pair were Paddy Murphy & Mark Roderick who finished top on X-imps & massively ahead of the rest of the field. The C team also had a good day finishing 2^nd & only 3 VPs behind Manchester with Bob James & Stuart Hunter top overall on X-imps. The B team had a mixed day with 2 heavy wins but also 3 heavy defeats and finished a disappointing 5^th with no pair +ve on X-imps. Full results can be found on the Realbridge site by logging in to kibitz:- https://kibitz.realbridge.online/

Season 6 for the county teams league will start on Monday 21^st September and the closing date for entries will be Friday 4^th. The league will continue the successful format of previous years with a relaxed and very flexible schedule of friendly 20 board matches. At present we have run the league in two divisions with the lower tier aimed at average club players & new teams are very welcome.  Anyone interested in entering should contact the league organiser Chris Raymond ( drcjr56@gmail.com ).

The Presidents Cup is a prestigious teams of eight competition contested by counties and regions from all over the British Isles and is hosted and organised by Merseyside & Cheshire. This year’s event was played out on Realbridge over the weekend of 4^th/5^th July. Our squad (John Hampson / Matt Foster, Julian Merrill / Paul Roberts, Mark Roderick / Paddy Murphy, Laurence Stone / David Smith & Mark Weeks, Chris Pope / Andy Prothero with Alan Stephenson as NPC) performed creditably finishing in 4th place is a very strong field albeit some way behind the top three teams. Our top pair on X-imps were Paddy & Mark but all were above or close to par. The overall winners were the team from Dublin who were well ahead at the end of day 1 & never lost the lead. Full results can be found on the Cumbria County website at:-

https://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwos/bw.cgi?pid=display_rank&event=20260705_2&club=cumbria

Thanks to all for taking part and representing M&CBA & to our chief county TD David Stevenson for organising and running the competition so successfully.

Eight teams played in an enjoyable, friendly and high standard competition over 28 boards. The clear victors (carrying on from their win last year) were the team of Paddy Murphy, Alan Stephenson, Mark Weeks and Stuart Matthews - see pic below.

The final of this competition which is the county teams championship took place on Tuesday 26th May. The match was played in four stanzas of 8 boards each and was initially closely contested with only 2 IMPs seperating the teams at the half way stage. However, the winning team had a very good third set (35:0) and there was no way back thereafter for team Merrill with the last set a tie. Congratulations to team Stevenson (Liz Commins, David Stevenson, Tracy Sherman, Paddy Murphy, Bob Pitts & Peter Kaufmann) who will now go forward to represent M&CBA in the national finals for the Pachabo Cup. 

Paddy Murphy, Liz Commins and David Stevenson from the winning team.

Many congratulations to Ted Hulme and Robert Smith who finished second in the Nine High Corwen Cup. This is a National competition for club players with an NGS of 9 or less.  Our pairs qualified through the recently revived Liverpool Open. This is the first time that Merseyside and Cheshire  have  entered anyone in this competition and we hope that it will not be the last! Look out for future qualifying events on our website.

Nineteen pairs played in the Liverpool Open Pairs on Sunday 29th March at Liverpool Bridge Club, superbly directed by David Smith.  This prestigious competition, returning after a break of a few years, took place for the first time in the club’s excellent new premises.

Congratulations to David Stevenson and Liz Commins who won for the fifth time, edging out Julian Merrrill and Paul Roberts in second place.

Congratulations also to the highest place 9 High pair, Gabriel McCarthy and Penny Roberts, who finished in third place overall.  They, and two other pairs, qualify for the EBU 9 High Corwen in May.