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Last year's successful inaugural event hosted jointly by Kingston Seymour Bridge Club and Clevedon & Portishead Bridge Club is being repeated this year, again at Kingston Seymour village hall, on 13th April. Full details and entry form are here.

The 2025 Michael Coda Cup was contested from Monday 24th to Friday 28th February. This year, like last year, each club will ran its own session on its usual evening from a prescribed set of boards, and the results from clubs taking part each night have been combined. So it is effectively a mini-simultaneous pairs each day that week, enabling players to play at more than one club during the week. Winning pairs qualify for a final on Realbridge to be held on 25th April (more details soon).

This year's charity to benefit from Somerset's Michael Coda Cup, chosen by the SCBA Committee on behalf of the late Sheila Coda, is the Young Carers Development Trust (www.ycdt.org.uk), a charity that tackles the lack of opportunity experienced by many young carers in the West of England due to their caring responsibilities.

We have 18 clubs participating this year -
Monday - Frome, Coxley, Crewkerne, Langport
Tuesday - Burnham, Cossington, Minehead
Wednesday - Backwell, Clevedon & Portishead, Cheddar & Wedmore
Thursday - Nailsea, Castle Cary, Wells City, Wemdon, Street
Friday - Clevedon & Portishead, Taunton, Winscombe

EBED will run a four-part teacher training course in Swindon in March. Full details are here. The EBU will provide for one member from each affiliated club to attend the course for free. The cost of further delegates from Somerset clubs may be recovered from the County depending on circumstances.

The EBU has offered all affiliated clubs free packs of playing cards with a Festival theme. Representatives of affiliated Somerest clubs who have not yet collected their free cards can do so from Woolavington Village Hall on the date of the next County event.

English Bridge Education and Development hope to run a half-day meeting of bridge teachers in Swindon on 9th March 2025. Anyone available to support such an event should contact Clive Turner. Details of a recent successful similar meeting are here.

Sheila Coda passed away on 23rd September. She served on the Somerset CBA Committee for over 30 years and also served Taunton Bridge Club well for many years. She was an excellent player, a Grand Master and regularly in the county A team, but also a nice person and will be sorely missed by our bridge community. Obituary now available. The funeral was held on 28th October.

Tony Russ, a previous Chairman of Somerset CBA and recently EBU Vice-Chair, passed away on 7th August following his recent illness. Tony did an immense amount for bridge in Somerset and will be sorely missed. Obituary now available. Link to EBU news item.

When Tony became Vice-Chair of the EBU he dedicated his time to promoting Bridge nationally. The Festival of Bridge was his idea, which he developed in a very short space of time.

During the festival week an amazing 300 events took place around the country. Linking it with the charity Cancer Research UK was a positive way of supporting a good cause within the event framework. Initially a target of £10,000 was talked about and this was uprated to possibly £60,000 as momentum grew. At the EBU Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 27 November a glowing tribute was paid to Tony when the staggering amount of £130,000 was presented to Cancer Research UK by EBU Chairman Adrian Darnell.

We in Somerset were fully aware of Tony's drive, his work ethic and his enthusiastic approach. He is sorely missed.

****BOOKINGS ARE NOW CLOSED****

This will be on Wednesday 12th February 2025 at Crispin Hall, Street (registration 9.30).

This will be a fun and informative day run by the UK's pre-eminent bridge educator and is suitable for players of all standards. You do NOT need a partner to attend.

There will be a break of an hour and a quarter, which will allow time for lunch, either in the Crispin cafe or elsewhere in Street.

The price is £32 per person and will include tea, coffee and biscuits throughout the day.

Please email Sheree Pavey (scbasec17@yahoo.com) to book your place, and please pay online to SCBA 30-98-45 03080007 with the reference 'AR (Your surname)'

Looking forward to seeing you on the day and, with Christmas on the horizon, this would make a perfect gift!

Simon Brooke

This Green Point event on 13th October, replacing the cancelled West of England Congress, was won by the team of Roger Sweet, Ian Morris, Warner Solomon and Ian Walsh. Full details here.

The 2024 Green Pointed Championship Teams of Four, our Premier teams event, will be held on Realbridge on Sunday 5th May. This year the event will be a round robin in two sessions. The top two teams will play off at a later date and the winners will represent Somerset in the Pachabo Cup. At least one pair in each team must both be registered as Somerset players. Full details and entry here.

EBED will run a new training course for Club Tournament Directors at Oake Village Hall, Taunton TA4 1JA, in January.

Day 0 (How to run a club duplicate), Sunday 19/01/2025
Day 1 (Book rulings), Sunday 02/02/2025
Day 2 (Book and judgement rulings), Sunday 16/02/2025
Day 3 (Assessment), Sunday 09/03/2025

Trainer: Jeremy Child. Price £72 per session for EBU members (£80 for non-EBU).

More details on content here. Book through an EBU club or via My EBU here.

Learn to play bridge at Winscombe & District Bridge Club:

• Year 2 / Improvers:
  Monday 10.00am – 12.30pm
• Year 1 / Beginners:
  Monday 1.00pm – 3.30pm

Starting 7th October 2024. £70 for 10 lessons at Winscombe Community Centre

For more information please contact Janet on 01934 253889 or email winbridgeclubjo@gmail.com

EBED will host a new 2 day Club Teacher Training event at High Bickington Community Center, North Devon, on 6th & 8th April 2024.

The trainer will be Sally Anoyrkatis. Price £220, though there are potential reductions available to EBU-affiliated clubs.

Details on the content of the courses is available here. Booking may be made via MyEBU or by calling Lisa Miller (Mon–Wed) on 01296 317217.

Our next event is a 9 high on 21st July at Woolavington. Similar to last year this will be a normal pairs event; we will discuss a selection of hands on a chosen topic, which this year will be responding at the two level in an uncontested auction.
Please put the date in your diary and complete the entry form. The entry cost is £4 and the optional tea is £6.

A scoring error on the last board of the Mixed Teams event on 15th September has been corrected and produced a change in the winner. The cup was awarded at first to the team of Grant Weston, Steve Fletcher, and Robin and Julie Kennedy, who had tied on 52 VPs with the team of Andrew Urbanski, Michael Wigmore, Chris King and Steve Tomlinson but won their head-to-head match, but the correction means that the latter team are the winners by 4 VPs. (Full result)

Cheddar & Wedmore Bridge Club, together with Winscombe Bridge Club, are opening up their BBO Axe online bridge session at 7:00pm on Wednesday 11th September to all Somerset players as part of the EBU’s ‘It’s a Big Deal!’ week-long festival of bridge.

As explained here, this Festival aims to promote bridge in the community and also raise £60,000 for cancer research.  The linked video is presented by Tony Russ, a previous chairman of the Somerset Contract Bridge Association and Vice Chairman of the English Bridge Union, who personally suffered from cancer and died recently. This is our way of recognising all that he did both for the SCBA and for the EBU. If you have not played in a Somerset BBO event before, then please contact Mike Dobson at jeanneandmikedobson@sky.com to register your BBO username, your name and EBU number with the SCBA by Monday 9th September. For instructions on how to sign in on the night please click here. Note, however, that the event name will be "Somerset BIABD duplicate pairs" and it will be run by run by [vEBU_SOM]. Table money will be 5BBO$ and all monies raised will be donated to Cancer Research.

The 2024 Michael Coda Cup will be contested from Monday 12th to Friday 16th February. This year the format is that each club will run its own session on its usual evening from a prescribed set of boards, and the results from clubs taking part each night will be combined. So it is effectively a mini-simultaneous pairs each day that week, enabling players to play at more than one club during the week. Club representatives are asked to inform the Secretary that they will be participating.

This year's charity chosen by Sheila to benefit from Somerset's Michael Coda Cup is Young Somerset. It is a local charity based in Edington, near Bridgwater, and is part of a larger charity called STAR that also works in other parts of the country. The aim of the charity is to help children and young people who have high levels of health problems, are in need, and are at risk and vulnerable. It looks after and delivers a wide range of services supporting young peoples' personal, social and educational development. The charity covers both urban and rural areas, finds work for young people and supports their training. Details can be found at www.youngsomerset.org.uk.

The total sum raised by participating Somerset clubs in this year's Michael Coda Cup is £1598, which has been donated to the charity Young Somerset. They have responded as follows:

Thank you for your donation of £1,600.00 in support of Donate to Young Somerset.

We are hugely grateful that you have chosen to support Young Somerset in this way, enabling us to continue putting young people first.

Young Somerset works to support the personal, social, economic and educational development of young people – using youth work as our core methodology. We take time to build relationships that are open, honest, trusting, respectful and led by the young people we serve. We want young people to thrive in their communities, build resilience and character, develop leadership and agency, and raise both their aspirations and horizons.

Your kind donation will contribute to our work and enable us to strive in our efforts to deliver exceptional work in Somerset’s communities – where we know that Putting Young People First will improve Somerset.

Nik Harwood
Chief Executive

The winning pairs were:
Monday: Derek & Maria Essen
Tuesday: Martin Longhurst & Malcolm Percival
Wednesday: Susie Lovell & Steve Tomlinson
Thursday: Val Rosser & Jean Parsons
Friday: Barbara Biggin & Gillian Toogood

The highest percentage was gained by Barbara and Gillian (Winscombe).

Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to all Somerset players who participated in the event and contributed to our charitable donation.

This EBU event takes place in various clubs, online and face-to-face, on 8th September 2024. Results are based on scores handicapped by NGS grade.

The nearest venue to play face-to-face is Bristol Bridge Club, but Somerset members are invited to play in the Realbridge event hosted by Cambs and Hunts Contract Bridge Association. Follow the links for more details.

The Annual General Meeting of SCBA was held at Woolavington on Sunday 12 May. The provisional minutes have now been published. All those standing for the Committee were elected unopposed, though the positions of Chairman and Vice-Chairman remain vacant.