The Orkney Bridge Club

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

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

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

It has proved necessary to postpone further the Annual General Meeting and the start of the new season.  This is due to holidays and other absences.  The new date for the AGM and season start is 6:15 pm on Wednesday, 4 October 2023. 

The Annual General Meeting and the start of the new bridge season, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, 20 September 2023, has been postponed by one week until 6:15 pm on Wednesday, 27 September 2023 due to too many Members being unavailable on the 20th.

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).

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.

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.

26^th Oct 2019

The second annual Distillery Event saw 17 pairs compete in the afternoon session of 24 boards. There were very few competitive hands which should have made the bidding easier to find the optimum contract.

Three boards had slam contracts: Board 6 saw North with 6 solid spades and 23 HCP and a positive response from partner should encourage further investigation but just 2 pairs bid the slam.

On board 13, after North opens 1S, South should be thinking of an easy 6H contract, half the pairs bid this slam.

Board 14 was not so easy to call, South opens with a strong balanced hand and North needs to see the potential of the 2 5-card minor suits. Just one pair bid this slam.

Sandy & Dave were clear winners of the Pairs event, ahead of Inga & George and Margaret & Linda.

The evening session had 9 teams of 4 competing. Tactics are slightly different in Teams, with one pair playing the hand as N/S and the other half of the team playing thae same hand as E/W the onus is on ensuring that you bid all the potential game / slam contracts as the result is based on the actual aggregate score.

All the big hands were with N/S and with one pair making 4 small slams on boards 11, 12, 24 & 25, 2 more than the other pairs, the final result was never going to be in doubt.

None of the slams should be defeated although on board 12, the 6S bid by North was overcalled 7H by West, which was obviously doubled. West had calculated that North would score 1430 for the vulnerable small slam and, with West not-vulnerable, could afford  to go 6 off doubled to only give away 1400, (only a small gain in Teams but would be good in pairs). When dummy came down it looked like 7 losers, assuming declarer could make 2 diamond ruffs, but was able to hold it to 6 when the AH & KH fell together.

Jim & Clinton / Dave & Dave were the clear winners, it was close for second with Graham & Dennis / Malcolm & Iso just ahead of Katherine & Pat / Margaret & Linda.

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.