Did we really think the spirit of Oxfordshire juniors would be deterred by Lockdown? Just because they have no physical school, sport nor any other activity and cannot even see one another? Of course not!

On Sunday afternoon 17th May forty juniors, aged from 9 – 16 years, played in a two hour pairs competition playing fifteen boards on BBO (Bridgebase Online.) Nineteen of these juniors were either current or former members of the Oxford Junior Bridge Club, which now meets regularly (in normal times!) on Sunday afternoons at the Oxford Bridge Club.

Some were old hands at using BBO, but for others it was their first experience of an online competition and, armed with some highly original Usernames, and grim determination, they duly logged on, as instructed, by 1.45pm – well about half of them did, meanwhile my mobile phone and inbox was awash with anxious messages:- “BBO won’t accept my Username”, I can’t remember my password” “Is it too late to enter?” “My partner’s pulled out!” “are usernames case sensitive?” “I can’t find my ipad….”

Huge thanks to Jonathan Lillicrop from the EBU and Kathy Talbot (Kathy52) our TDs, who somehow, miraculously managed to solve all these crises and play duly started, almost on time and proceeded, without further dramas.

Warmest congratulations to Zane Soonawalla and Freddie Beneat, North/South winners  and to Rufus Barnet and Marco Vann, East/West winners. Leo Fleming, aged 9 years and his cousin, Ned Blakemore, were the top scoring pair of the Novices.

Further thanks are due to Jonathan Lillicrop at the EBU, who gave us this competition free of charge, and to Giorgio Provenza and Joan Bennett for rounding up further troopers to compete.It was sad not to be able to give them a lovely tea and to congratulate them ALL but we hope this might be the first of many such junior events.

Holly Kilpatrick, 19th May 2020

Starting with the Video Bridge session on Thursday evening 21st May, we are making some changes to the way we set up Video Bridge sessions. Some additional directors are now available to run sessions through our EBU Virtual Club running on BBO. Additionally we do want to help to ensure the longterm viability of the club by generating some income from the sessions that we run. Thus the video sessions will now become chargeable.  The character of the sessions will remain the same but the new method will reduce the administrative load carried by those organising the sessions.

There may well be some teething problems while we settle into this new method. As always if you have any feedback or need some help with playing bridge online please let us know at online@oxfordbridgeclub.com. 

The club is running regular online duplicate pairs sessions twice a week, on Tuesday evenings and Friday mornings. Additional sessions will be added over the next few weeks and months as more directors are trained. 

Players of all abilities are welcome to take part. Non-members from Oxford and the surrounding area and ex-members/people who have played regularly at the club are also welcome. Additionally, OBC members may play with a visitor from outside the Oxford area.  

All sessions will count towards NGS and will be masterpointed. The charge per session is BB$4 (about £3.20).

• Tuesday evenings at 7.15pm, playing 18 boards at the standard rate of 14 minutes per round. 
• Friday mornings at 10am, playing 16 boards at a more leisurely pace of 16 minutes per round. 

See here for more details. 

OBC's online teams league is a fun event for players of all abilities, where the emphasis is on social contact, rather than on the bridge, although the bridge is important too!  It is a teams-of-4 competition using Bridge Base Online’s Teams Matches option, playing two 8-board rounds, with a short break between rounds. 

Series 1 of the league was run in April and the final matches have been completed. Congratulations to "Granny and the Young", the "Dog Squad" and "Weak Twos" who won their respective leagues.

The second series of the league starts on Thursday 7th May, with a deadline for completion of all matches of Thursday 25th June. 

For further details please click here

Oxford Bridge Club's first online duplicate pairs session on BBO took place on Bridge Base Online on Tuesday 5th May at 3pm. Our Chief Tournament Director directed the 20 tables in play - Thank you to Martin. The results are available as if it was a regular session at 147 Banbury Road. Movements in such BBO sessions are two-winner Mitchell movements. So congratulations go to the NS winning pair John Deech and Rob Procter and to the EW winning pair Peter Litchfield and Sandra Nicholson.