Wednesday Duplicate 

We decided to change the start date for the Wednesday evening Duplicate session from 7pm to 7.30 pm starting from Wednesday 3rd April. This should give a bit more time for Members to have supper first and also help people to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic. Let’s see how it works out but first indications have been quite positive. 

Booking Classes

Bridge teaching sessions will soon be bookable online via the Club website starting from Monday 22nd April. 

Booking will open six days in advance at 9am. The option to book via Reception will continue, but we believe that most Members will easily adjust to the new online system. 

We are hoping that after the system is running smoothly for booking lessons that it can also be used for some social functions in future. More details on the new system will be available on BridgeWebs. Thanks very much to John Maskell and Club Staff for arranging this helpful development for the Bridge Section. 

Competition results 

The Roehampton Club Teams Trophy was held on Monday 8th April with nine teams competing. Congratulations to Nigel Aspinall, Peter Bonor Morris, Ralph Evers and Ron Wood on a convincing win with a total of 86 imps. 

On 20th March Roehampton Club played an away match against Royal Mid Surrey, finally just winning by 19 imps in a very relaxed and good natured affair. 

Immediately afterwards, on 21st March, a Roehampton Club team played away at the All England and won by 53 imps. The half time score was much closer with Roehampton Club managing a strong second half performance where a slam was bid and made by both our pairs which the opposition over cautiously stayed out of. 

We also played a home match against the MCC on 28th March. It was relatively close with Roehampton Club finally winning by 27 imps. The result was heavily influenced by one board in the second half where a good sacrifice by the Roehampton Club pair rather fortunately turned into a thin game resulting in a double game swing to Roehampton Club. 

There are several upcoming fixtures to look forward to including Queens Club at home on 7th May and the Oxford and Cambridge club at home on 14th May and matches scheduled in June against RAC Woodcote and RAC Pall Mall. 

Many thanks to Nigel for running the Friday teams session twice monthly over the winter season. It was great to see this being so well attended. From May we will switch to the summer programme with the Friday teams moving to the third Friday of the month only. Many thanks also to Maria Wiehe for offering to help run this summer programme once again. 

Bridge Summer Party

Organization for the Bridge Summer Party to be held on Thursday 6th June is now well underway. Hopefully the weather will favour us and we can start with drinks in the garden as usual. Definitely one for the diary … 

Polite reminder 

Finally a small favour to ask … We would be grateful if Members can kindly remember that we agreed to keep food out of the Bridge Room so as to keep the cards and tablecloths as pristine as we can. 

This does also apply to nibbles from the bar (especially as some people have nut allergies). It’s easy to forget, so a gentle reminder in the exceptional case that someone is non-compliant is helpful. 

Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair

Bridge Blog

We have a few changes on the horizon which I am pleased to say have gone down well with members of the Bridge Section.

After sounding out the feelings of the Members who play most actively at the Wednesday sessions, we decided to change the start date for the Wednesday evening Duplicate Bridge from 7pm to 7.30pm. This change will take place from Wednesday 3rd April. Reminders will be posted in due course.

After some discussions with Club Management, we have been able to abolish the charge for the Supervised Play sessions run on Tuesday afternoons by Loulou and Arnold. This brings this session in line with the Duplicate Sessions (which are also no longer charged) and should spread the benefits of the Club’s support to a wider audience.

This policy took place with effect from and including Tuesday 5th March and represents another generous offer from the Club to support the Bridge Section which we very much appreciate.

Competition results

At the end of February, the Roehampton Club Blue team of Malcolm Bricknell, Peter Bonnor-Moris, Ralph Evers and Philip Howard won this year’s Devonshire Cup, beating the Savile Club in the final, thereby retaining the trophy for Roehampton Club for another year.

The match was close with our team finally winning by the relatively small but useful margin of 540 points. In fact, all three Roehampton Club teams did well and reached the quarter finals of the competition, so really an excellent result.

The Club’s pairs competition was played on 12th and 19th February for the Founders Trophy. The winners for a very impressive second year in a row were Henryka and Peter Bonnor-Moris.

They can now represent Roehampton Club in the Surrey pairs tournament for the Mary Edwards Cup. Really well done against some quite experienced competition.

On 15th February we had our match against Hurlingham competing for the Hurlingham Cup. We fielded a strong team and won by a comfortable margin of around 60 imps in a very enjoyable match.

Lessons, Supervised Play and Workshop

The new workshop session on Friday mornings being run by Niall Igoe started up on 8th March. It was very encouraging to see the course so well attended from the outset and so able to get off to a great start. The sessions will be largely complementary to Niall’s very popular Wednesday sessions and will have a strong focus around different aspects of play based on actual hands.

We hope to move to online registration quite soon for this and other lessons if and when the system for Members to book via the club website is operational and working smoothly.

Lessons are now well underway for the spring term with Niall Igoe running two intermediate sessions at the Club and James Thrower taking the beginners class. There are also online options with Tim Chanter and Paul Mendelson for people used to their teaching.

Great to hear that the Lady Golf Captain’s Charity Bridge event on Tuesday 13th February raised an impressive £750 for the local Small Steps charity which supports parents and carers with children who have motor and sensory impairments. I think this is a great tradition for us to support and congrats to the organizers on another well run event.

Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair

The Founders Trohpy is an internal competition over two consecutive  Monday afternoons: the 12th Feb and 19th Feb.  Members only.  11 tables = 22  pairs played = 44  people.

Henryka  and Peter Bonnor-Morris scored 67.53% on the first day and then 58.33% on the 19th winning the Trophy - many congratulations.