I am standing for election as a director of the EBU board.

My goal is to work for an improved relationship between the EBU Board, affiliated clubs and constituent counties. I would like to see mutual exchange of information, help and even inspiration. Together we can halt the decline in bridge in England.

There have been several initiatives to work towards this goal already and some are bearing fruit, however others have petered out, perhaps because of a lack of knowledge and empathy between the parties.

Without more positive engagement between the grass roots of the game the financial and human resources available to the centre may well dwindle to a critical level.

A mature and responsible approach will be to provide information, answer questions, engage in debate and work jointly on improvements.

A less profitable approach is to attack the messenger and try to bury the message. 

Nicky has been playing bridge for over forty years.

Nicky has been teaching bridge for twelve years. She is a fully qualified EBUTA teacher, achieved in February 2005.

Nicky qualified as a Club Tournament Director in 2004 and as a County Director in 2011.

Nicky served on the committee of Rugby Bridge Club for several years, on its development sub-committee and as treasurer.

Nicky served on the committee of the Rugby and District Bridge League on two occasions, once at its foundation, and once more recently.

Following the disaffiliation of Rugby Bridge Club from the English Bridge Union, in April 2010, Nicky founded Rugby Village Bridge Club.

Nicky has been on the Northamptonshire Contract Bridge Association Committee for three years, and presently serves as shareholder and vice chairman. In this capacity she was nominated to represent Northants on the EBU Midlands County Working Group.

Nicky believes that duplicate bridge is a great pleasure to the tens of thousands who play it at a casual, or social level, or in clubs at a moderately competent level. She is motivated by the enjoyment that so many people can get from duplicate bridge where it is played in congenial circumstances. As a teacher of many years standing she gets more pleasure from watching one of her improvers finally remember to draw trumps than from any resultsof her own. She has been saddened on many occasions to hear from players of the unpleasant experiences that give duplicate bridge a poor reputation.

Nicky is sure that duplicate is a vital social lifeline for many older players and can combat isolation in later life which is a known factor in poor health and early death.

You will be aware that there is a widespread feeling that, although the National Grade System works well most of the time, when stronger players play with weaker players the stronger player’s grade is disproportionately reduced by a poor result. I have spoken to many who believe it and Jim and I are completely convinced of it.

The EBU have always denied that there is any such anomaly.

It was therefore a bit of a surprise when a new release of ScoreBridge, at the end of any session, offered the facility to exclude the results of up to two players from the National Grade System. We blithely assumed that this was a tacit nod to the problem and meant for hosts to exclude bad results playing with someone weaker.

Our club is a proprietary club and we include hosting in the staff’s duties, so members are not asked to host. We provide a host at all pairs and coaching sessions, and I do most of it, so I generally host about twice a week. I used the facility to exclude some of my worst sessions playing as host with some of our weaker members. It was a very small proportion of the sessions I hosted at my club, and even smaller proportion of my playing overall, about half of which takes place outside the club.

At a voluntary EBU county working group meeting, this topic came up, and I described what I did to compensate for a lot of hosting.  I was immediately denounced to the EBU by Darren Evetts, EBU director.

It turns out that the exclusion facility is supposed to be used only by agreement with the TD in advance. It is clearly written in the guide and I should have known, but obviously I didn’t.

I imagine that this came about because members’ clubs were finding that some of their stronger players were refusing to host because of the potential damage, as they saw it, to their National Grade. The EBU response is presumably meant to allow the club to say to such members, in advance, that their results will be excluded from the calculation. Perhaps this reassurance means that the stronger player will relent and host after all.

In our environment it makes no sense. Twice a week I would have to look at the person I am going to play with as host and bet whether the result is going to be a bad one. Or, technically, under the rules, I could simply inform the EBU that I intend to exclude all my results playing as host, which would be more than eighty-five sessions a year! Obviously, after this disciplinary action, I can’t exclude any more results, so I am just trying to gently reduce my hosting duties.

Since all this blew up, I haven’t excluded any results and have avoided some hosting, and my grade has shot up!

Now that the EBU is aware of this issue, they are checking other clubs’ activity. I would imagine they would expect to see only a handful of exclusions a year, always by the host or host pair. Unless you email them at the beginning of the session I don’t know how you prove the decision was made before the session started, but that should be the case.

You might ask why Darren denounced me (I really can’t use any other word), didn’t just approach me after the meeting and ask me if I knew what I was doing was against the rules. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Please pass this on to anyone who wants know

In November 2016 I stood for election to the EBU Boad of Directors hoping to be in a position to improve, and make reciprocal the relationship between clubs, counties and the EBU board.

Unfortunately, not successful, but in the end, I feel it was a good result.

Although I hoped to be elected, it was perhaps ambitious.

I was very pleased with the support.

Most of all I detected in both "official" words at the meeting, and in informal chats that discussion has switched to some of the areas I believe urgently need airing.

I was very glad that a date for a chairman's meeting was announced in July next year.

I would love to get some "real" rather than time filling topics on to the agenda.

Having a bit of a break from it all now, I have club and personal Christmas things to sort.

Please pass on my thanks to anyone and everyone who voted for me, or otherwise supported me.