The Orkney Bridge Club

Meets every Wednesday evening throughout the winter (from October - 16th of April)

In the Kirkwall Bowling Club - 6:45 pm for a 7:00 pm start.

Also play online (RealBridge) on Thursdays at 7 pm.

Duplicate Bridge is also played on Tuesday evenings from October to end of April at Dounby Bridge Club

The Orkney Bridge Club Open event was held at the Orkney Gin Distillery on Saturday, 25 January.  The event comprised a Pairs competition in the afternoon and a Teams competition in the evening with an excellent meal at the Albert Hotel in between.

Twelve pairs competed for the Pairs Trophy which was won by Dave Higgins & Sandy McConnachie (59.55%).  Six teams competed for the Team Trophy which was won by Davie Aim & Clinton Rendall teamed up with Sheena Hay & Jean Tulloch.  Thank you to everyone who took part.

The Orkney Distillery Bridge event returned this year after covid and other interruptions.

After being greeted with a complimentary drink the players assembled in the upstairs function room for the afternoon Pairs event. This year saw a new pair on the trophy with Davie & Clinton winning ahead of Iso & Malcolm.

After us all going for a meal at the Albert Hotel we resumed with the Teams of Four competition.

The victorious team on this occasion was Bob & Bruce and Linda & Sheila.

Many thanks to Katherine for organising this and our hosts, Stephen Kemp and staff of The Orkney Distillery.

6^th Feb 2021

We managed to complete the first of our annual tournaments, the Orkney Open for all Orkney based bridge players, was run over two Saturday evenings, online, on BridgeBase. There were fewer tables than normal, as these online events are restricted to SBU members, with 7 tables entered.

The Pairs event was won by Dave & Sandy with Margaret & Linda runners up.

The Handicap Teams, each team made up according to the placing of the pairs in the earlier Pairs result, was won by Margaret & Ruth playing with Dave & Sandy.

Orkney Distillery Event 2020

This postponed event, sponsored by The Orkney Distillery, was played online, over the 2 Saturdays of 27^th Feb & 6^th March.

The Pairs competition was played first and was won by Dave & Sandy with Mike & Bob in second place.

The Teams of 4, on the following week was won by Margaret & Linda and Katherine & Pat ahead of the Sinclair/Ross team (if only the male half had performed as well as the better half !! I bet they got some stick later).

The third Orkney Open event couldn’t have been much closer in the Pairs competition, with 18 match points to be gained on each hand there were only 7 points between the top four at the end of the session. Congratulations to Alan & Wilma coming first out of the 20 pairs, ahead of Margaret & Linda and Davie & Mike.

The evening Handicap Teams of 4 was a different story, the clear winners were Katherine & Pat with Sheila & Peter, using aggregate scoring their 3050 was a huge 2100 ahead of the second placed team of George & Ally with Iso & Malcolm.

East/West had by far the best of the hands as evidenced in the final result with no North/South achieving a positive score. There were 2 obvious slam hands for E/W on boards 7 & 17, in Teams, failing to bid the sure game & slam contracts can cost your team dearly, as can trying for 50/50 grand slam and failing.

Shetland Inter-County 2019

This Inter-County bridge competition was started in 2007 and with the score at 6 victories each who would be the unlucky team for this 13^th competition?

While bridge in Orkney is flourishing, Shetland are going through a lean time and came with a slightly depleted team of 6 pairs, making Orkney favourites for this year.

The event was played over 2 sessions, morning & afternoon, with each pair playing 36 hands, the result went according to the form book with Orkney the clear winners by 5020.

The hand with biggest swing was Board 29 where Orkney gained +1250. North is dealer and may open with their 5 diamonds and 11 HCP, this will make it difficult for East to describe their hand of 6 clubs and 23 HCP but East should still find the vulnerable 3NT contract. It was just bid 3 times, 2 Orkney pairs made the contract while the one Shetland pair went 1 down.

Orkney had other big swings of over 700 points on Boards 13, 18,19, 26 & 36 while Shetland’s biggest gains were on Boards 12 (480) and 26 (620).

Because of the popularity of bridge in Orkney, we ran a parallel Pairs Plate competition, with pairs also playing 36 hands, the winning pair being Sheila Walls & Peter Middleton ahead of Bruce Pilkington & Maggie Paterson and Glad Marwick & Sheena Hay.

The evening event had 44 players competing for the Pairs Stewarts Rum Cup, the current holders, Davie Aim & Mike Sinclair, stuck to their winning formulae to retain the cup, coming ahead of Penelope Smith & Rob Royall with Allan Leslie & Garry Williamson taking third place.

On Sunday, the players had the morning free before the Teams of 4 event saw 11 teams playing 30 hands over two sessions, the shield was retained by the combined pairs of Davie Aim / Mike Sinclair & Dave Higgins / Sandy McConnachie and the runners up were Ken Rae / Violet Tulloch & Penelope Smith / Rob Royall.