Time to be organising your team for the next No Fears Midland Counties Swiss Teams event on RealBridge, this time for players with NGS ranking averaging 9 or below.  Again SSCBA are offering free entry for County members.  Click here for details. With three or more teams the County also gets a ranking against the other Counties, please be sure SSCBA has at least three teams.

The event that was due to be held at the end of January at clubs is unable to go ahead in the present situation.  The committee will look at this again in the summer, when perhaps there will be more confidence in face to face bridge around the county!

SSCBA member Paul Hackett is one of Brian Senior's team who have retained the Gerard Faulkner Salver (as reported on January 4th 2022 by the EBU). The full team: Brian Senior (Captain), Tony Forrester, Paul Hackett, Sandra Penfold and Norman Selway. 

Jason Hacket was a member of the winning team at the Midlands Counties Congress, played on BBO, on 9th January.  Many Congratulations Paul and Jason.  Several SSCBA members took part in the Congress Friday and Saturday sessions.

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

Wednesday Evenings 7 p.m.

Regular SSCBA Virtual Bridge Club

SSCBA  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). The first SSCBA Club on line session was on  Wednesday, 10th June 2020, at 7 p.m. There are still regularly around 7 or 8 tables each week even though some clubs have opened up. Click here for information on how to join the group.

From Online Membership Secretary's Newsletter of 29th November 2021

Robots:  We believe that when we set up the online club on Wednesdays we stipulated that robots would only be used in an emergency:  loss of partner or to complete a full table (BBO can’t cope with half-tables).    No one likes to meet a robot at the table so we have asked our current TD to tweak the rules of our game to exclude starting to play with a robot.    The county has to pay the BBO fees and the P2P fees for stand-in players and robots. 
“Partnership Desk”:    If you are without a partner for the evening, I understand that this site is a place you could try to find one.   Such a partner has to be a member of our club though:  so that means other members have to use that system too.     Alternatively, if you are prepared to play with another person or a robot, the TD might invite you to be part of that standby pair.
Alerts & Explanations:   These are much improved, but don’t forget to add an explanation if you click on Alert.
System cards:   You can complete any number of convention cards, one for each partner, and your opponent can look at yours by clicking on one of the white lines in the blue box at top left.   A shorter version can be completed under Account to the right of the page, and opponents can look at that by clicking your user name.
Names:   How nice and friendly it would be if we had a name for each player rather than a blank.   Someone might greet you by name!   You can presumably delete it if you are playing elsewhere and you want to remain anonymous.