Our ♣ sparkles like a ♦, has a big ♥ and ♠♠♠ of bonhomie, boosted by beverage, biscuits, and banter before bridge begins.

Sessions held every Thursday at 7.30pm at the Coombes Community Centre, Burns Road, Royston.

The club has electronic scoring and computer-dealt hands so results and deals are available straight away.

Visitors are always welcome but need to come with a partner. If you are new to the area, use Find a Partner (Public) and the club will make every effort to provide a suitable partner for you.

◄ For further details, see Information and Calendar.

◄ Do you want to learn to play bridge, or improve your play? See Learning Bridge.

◄ We also feature a few interesting hands played at the club recently, see Hand of the Month.

A reminder that the annual ECATS Children in Need Simultaneous Pairs (SIMS) events are being arranged at many UK clubs throughout the week, with Royston participating this Thursday, 14th November. For these SIMS events, you not only get a club ranking in the normal way, but also an overall ranking within the entire field (numbering close to two thousand pairs on the Thursday in recent years).

The table money will be raised to £5 for this event, with the net proceeds going to Children in Need. There may even be cake available at the club for a small extra donation.

Over the years, ECATS has raised over a million pounds for Children in Need from these SIMS events, an incredible achievement. Hope to see you there.

Hitchin Bridge Club held  their Autumn blue-pointed Swiss Pairs event on Saturday, 9th November. Dave came second (playing with Richard Jones, a scratch partner from Hitchin). Both Valerie & Brian and Ruth & Peter also did well. Full details can be found on the Hitchin website. The winning pair were two England Junior internationals, Ian Robson (no relation!) and Ewa Wieczorek.

Brian & Dave were the only Royston pair to take up Michael Shine's invitation to play in the Heath Cup Swiss Pairs at Hatfield Heath Bridge Club on Sunday, 6th October. They came seventh with a solid performance in a "mixed" field, even emerging from a round against Celia & Derek Oram relatively unscathed. Scores are available on the Hatfield Heath website.

A few members from Royston braved the large and strong fields in the two Swiss events jointly run by Herts and Essex at Ware on the weekend of 21st-22nd September. Brian & Valerie competed in the Swiss Pairs, as did Jules (playing with Derek, an occasional visitor to the club) and Saroj & Alan teamed up with the Eddlestons in the Swiss Teams. Full results can be found on the HBA website.

For those who've never played in a Swiss Pairs event, the idea is that with each succeeding round you go up or down in the rankings according to how well you've done in the previous round, and you never play the same opponents twice. After a few rounds, most pairs should be pitted against opponents of a roughly similar standard. It's both competitive and good fun... give it a go.

Unfortunately, Royston were unrepresented in this year's HBA Club Winners Cup, as both qualifying pairs (Dave & Suzanne and Alan & Saroj) were unavailable.

However, one Royston member Brian was playing in the event (representing Hitchin with his partner John White). They were unable to retain the trophy they convincingly won last year, though I see they were the only ones to bid a grand slam on board 27 despite missing the king of trumps.

Did it make... well, find out for yourself. Results can be found on the HBA website in the usual way.

The club has announced the team to represent Royston in the HBA Eccles Cup on Friday 15th November in Hemel Hempstead: it's Peter & Ruth, Saroj & Alan, Peter & Carole and Colin & John.

Harpenden are the current holders. Let's hope the Royston team can regain the trophy, which would make it an unprecedented three wins in the last four years for the club.

Thanks to all eight players for volunteering, and good luck on the night!

This is Royston Bridge Club's official website, Dave Simmons is the current web administrator.

Please have a browse through the website. Some pages are only available to Members. To access these pages click on the link to Members Only on the top right of the Home page to login.

Any comments or suggestions for improving the website are welcome. Just email me at dave.simmons4@gmail.com or via Contact Us.