Thanks to everyone who took part in the Dawes teams-of-eight inter-county match on Sunday 17th January against Worcestershire. 

The first division lost 5-15 VPs, the second division lost 1-19 VPs, and the third division drew 10-10 VPs. 

The results can be found here. 

This is a chance for club players, who have an NGS of 8 (51%) or lower, to represent and support Staffs & Shrops in a relaxed playing environment.  The event will be run on RealBridge, giving you the opportunity of seeing and talking with your partner and opponents.

Inter-County bridge events have tended to be for the more experienced players, but the increasing popularity of online bridge brings an opportunity to offer them to a wider audience. In order to assist with this endeavour, the County Committee have agreed that entry fees will be paid from county funds, so teams entering will not be required to pay an entry fee.

See flyer for more details.

AN INVITATION TO ALL MEMBERS of S&SCBA TO PLAY BRIDGE IN A FRIENDLY CLUB ATMOSPHERE ON LINE

Wednesdays

Evenings 7 p.m. Regular Bridge (started on June 10th)

SSCBA has set up a virtual “Club” with the help of the EBU and Bridge Base Online (BBO), holding sessions on Wednesday evenings (a traditional County night). Our first SSCBA Club on line session was on  Wednesday, 10th June 2020, at 7 p.m. A second session, No Fears, in the afternoons started on July 8th but has had to be abandonned due to lack of support following the game on August the 5th.   Those that have taken part in the No Fears events have all enjoyed the sessions, just not enough players.  If there is demand a second attempt to run No Fears could be made in the Autumn.

Many thanks are due to Judy Mitchell, John Withers and James Vickers and others for the considerable amount of work they have put in to setting the virtual club up. Feedback from one of the players "Most important is thanks for getting this going. I'm certain it is absolutely the right thing to do for local bridge in the lockdown. Keep up the good work."

Congratulations to the winners of the opening session NS Keith Shuttleworth & Brian Nicholls and EW Paul Cutler & Martin Aherne. 

Draw now up.

When you meet your opponents you can set up the BBO chat manager to enable you to greet them with your basic system, see links to videos on how to used  chat Manager, Using Chat Manager in BBO - Bing video, Chat manager on you tube.  For example "Hello both, Jill and Susan here, we play Beni, wkNT, stayman, transfer, wk Majors, RKCB".  In addition to using the "chat" please use the alert BBO facility, for example to show strength of 1NT bid and any conventional bids, even Stayman and Transfers.

Here are links to the documents which will help you to start playing with BBO:

How to create your BBO account (despite what it says in these instructions we do want you to put your real full name here, and we would like to you give a summary of your system under ‘Other’. This would have to be altered if you play a different system with another partner.)

• Starting to Play
• Guidelines for Play
• Alerting please also see Paul's comments
• Profile, System etc
• Money into BBO Account
• How to Play at the Club (on the day)

When you are ready to join the on-line virtual Club you should register with the Membership Secretary, John Withers, on jwithersx@gmail.com, giving: 

• your name,
• your user name,
• EBU number if you have one,
• contact telephone and email address.
• which section you wish to play in Staffs & Shrops Online Bridge Club or the NoFears Online Bridge Club

Only those who have registered will be able to play at the Club, and we need to know which group you wish to play in.

If you have any questions or need any help, please get in touch with one of these listed below:
Judy Mitchell – mitchellmj@btinternet.com  01743 235374
John Withers - jwithersx@gmail.com  01384 271089
James Vickers  - J.Vickers@wlv.ac.uk 
Paul Cutler – paulcutlersscba@yahoo.co.uk  07939 977499
Pam Booth Jones – pamelaboothjones@gmail.com  01952 222421

Judy Mitchell
S&SCBA Secretary.

01743 235374