A large number of OBC members took part in the annual Oxfordshire Bridge Association Congress held over the weekend of 8th - 9th June.

Very many congratulations to Zane and Zahir Soonawalla (pictured) who won the Friendly Pairs competition held on the Sunday. 

Congratulations also go to Christopher Whitehouse, Mary-Ann Sheehy, Matthew Covill & Amr El-Kashef who came third in the Swiss Teams competition. 

Full results are available on the OBA website. 

Congratulations to Sandra Nicholson and her partner Krys Kazmierczak who came 11th in the final round of the Corwen Trophy – an EBU national event.   To reach the final round players need be one of the top four pairs in their County Pairs Competition.   Nationally, 95 pairs go through to the final so achieving 11th place in the final is a fantastic achievement for Sandra and Krys and they earn Gold points for this success.   Well done!

While visiting Chicago in early June member Denis Talbot met up with Aleks Lishkov who moved to the city earlier this year. Aleks sends his best wishes to the members of the OBC and misses playing at the club. Denis and Aleks managed to fit in two enjoyable sessions of bridge (point a board teams and MP pairs) at the Chicago Bridge Centre. The members were all very welcoming and friendly. He is looking forward to his next trip there.

Aleks, we miss you too!   . . . and your contributions to the psyche book!

This is the first in an occasional series where I will look at certain Laws based on incidents at the OBC, sometimes observed by me or otherwise reported to me.   The series is intended to help players improve their understanding of the Laws.

Laws 42 and 43 cover what Dummy can and cannot do.  Basically, Dummy cannot do very much.  Dummy may keep count of the tricks; Dummy plays cards as directed by the Declarer and makes sure that the dummy hand follows suit.  Dummy may ask a Declarer, but not a Defender, whether they have no more in a suit once they have not followed suit. Dummy must not participate in the play in any way and must not look at cards in anyone else’s hand.

Importantly, Dummy may try to prevent an irregularity but may not call attention to an irregularity during play; Dummy must wait until the hand has been played before calling attention to an irregularity.  So, if Declarer looks to be about to lead from the wrong hand, Dummy can advise Declarer where the lead is.  However, if the lead is in Declarer’s hand but Declarer asks for a card from the dummy hand, Dummy should just play the designated card from dummy and do absolutely nothing else.  I am sure most of us have broken this Law at some time (I certainly have): it is a natural reaction to say something, but that is the wrong thing to do. More on a related topic next time.

Martin Illingworth, Chief TD

The club’s competition for the Morrie Marsh Trophy took place on Monday 20th May.   Congratulations to the winners, Mena Remedios and Clive Gillam who came first with the impressive score of 68.97%.   The runners up were Paulette Eeley and Pam Parsons with Mary Chait and John Foord in third place.