The Club is sad to hear that Steve Nyman died on 8th February after a long illness.

He was charming at the bridge table, always friendly and a pleasure to play against, and he will be greatly missed.

He loved playing bridge and his wife (Audrey) says it was the longest lasting of all his hobbies (having started when he was about 16).

He also did a lot for young people and ran a successful youth group.

Steve's funeral is on Wednesday 12th March at 12 noon.  For full details please email Erica (ericasheppard5ATgmail.com).

Albert Eastham sadly died on 23rd December at the age of 89 after a short illness.

He was a longstanding member of the club, and was always ready to chat.  He was an interesting person, a proud Lancashire man, and a university lecturer who had worked in many countries and climbed many mountains!  He will be missed.

A thanksgiving service will be held on Friday 21st February at 1pm at St. Andrew's Church, Linton Road, Oxford OX2 6UG.  Albert was keen that the service should not be a sombre occasion. He was a fan of brightly coloured clothes so please feel free to dress as you wish. He wanted everyone to enjoy some food afterwards and have time to chat - two of his favourite pastimes! 

Any pair that gets over 55% in a club game in the weeks commencing 3rd and 10th February will be entitled to play in the Regional Finals on 23rd March.  Oxfordshire is part of the Midlands Region, along with Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northants, Nottinghamshire, Staffs & Shropshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire.  The regional finals will be online.

The results from the regional finals will determine the top 50 pairs, who will be entitled to play in the National Pairs Final on RealBridge on 12th - 13th April 2025.

On Monday, 27th January, ten tables played in our first sim pairs in over five years, the ECats Charity Pairs in aid of UNICEF, a strictly 'fun' event, with no prizes and no extra master points.

Here is the link to the national results:

https://www.simpairs.com/default.asp?session=003665

ECats asks that players consider making individual donations of at least £3 to UNICEF, who desperately need money to be able to help the many thousands of children affected by war, famine, floods and climate change.

The details of how to make payment are here:

We are continuing our collaboration with Dorchester Bridge Club, which is working very well and resulting in very satisfactory turnouts and getting to know new people.

We have a tradition of charity donations at Christmas, and both Dorchester and Summertown encourage you to make a donation to Crisis at Christmas, to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

Here is a link to their website https://www.crisis.org.uk/crisis-at-christmas/.  There is a donate tab a little way down the page.

The OBA is inviting players to compete in an on-line teams-of-four competition starting in January 2025, on the fourth Thursday of each month on Real Bridge starting at 19.00.

There will be one competition between January - May 2025 and a second competition between July - November 2025.

Teams can be made up of players from multiple clubs, and the team can be made up of different players each month. It is anticipated that most players will have an NGS of about 8+. The results for each competition will be recorded in a ladder on the OBA website.

Names of proposed captains should be sent to matthewcovill@hotmail.com.  The captain is then responsible for organising a team to play each month and paying the usual OBA table money on-line. The captain does not need to be available for every match, just to make sure a team is fielded by entering the team each month on the OBA website.

Oxfordshire is repeating the format it used last year for its county pairs heats.  If you are an OBA member, play in our club pairs in the weeks commencing 17th November 2024, 1st December 2024 or 5th January 2025, and score 50% or more, this will entitle you to play in one of three County Pairs Semifinals.

If you qualify, this will entitle you to play in one of three County Pairs semifinals, all to be held on RealBridge on different dates in February 2025. 

The top 20 pairs from the semifinals will qualify to play in the final, which will be held in March 2025, also on RealBridge. 

Exciting news!

We've been having discussions with another EBU-affiliated club (Dorchester in Dorset) about combining resources.  They, like us, have had to cancel sessions for lack of numbers.  Here is a link to their website.

We've agreed a trial co-operative arrangement for August of them running the first and third Mondays (with their own director), and us running the second (teams) and fourth Mondays.  We hope you'll enjoy meeting some new opponents, and that both clubs will find that having more tables in play provides us with a better experience.

For the length of the trial we will not be charging table money or requiring players to register.  The RealBridge link will be emailed on the SumBC circulation list on the relevant Monday and at the same time will also put it on our website.

Come and join us and make this work!

Both our main Wessex League team, and the A team in the Daytime League, have played their first matches of the season in early November.

The team in the Main League (now, thankfully, back to playing in Division 2) had a very pleasant match last night against Oxford D, with me (Sandra) acting as captain, since our real captain Holly wasn't playing in this one herself. Summertown were some way ahead at the end of the first half but the OBC team fought back hard during the second half: however, they didn't quite manage to catch up, leaving us with a narrow win which worked out at 11.54 - 8.46 in VPs.

Robert and Alison were the star turn for Summertown, coming top overall in the "cross-imping" (pairs ranking), largely because they managed to defeat two games that were made everywhere else. Well done and thank you to them and to the rest of the team, who were: myself and Krys, the Blisses, and Betty and Sara, with Linda and Dave standing by as reserves.

The A team in the Daytime League played this afternoon against Abingdon B and also had a very nice time, but unfortunately with much less success. The best that could be said was that we lost the second half by only 2 IMPs. However, since we'd already been thoroughly trounced in the first half, we emerged with a VP score of only 1.67 out of 20. Many thanks nevertheless to Robert who played with me, Holly and Steph who also played, and Erica and Ann who were reserves on this occasion.

Just to show you how difficult bidding can be, even when you think you've agreed almost everything that could possibly come up - here's something that happened during the Main League match:

You're playing an Acol-based system with four card majors and a weak NT. Your partner opens 1D, the next hand bids 1S and you double, indicating that without the intervention, you would have bid hearts - so you have at least 6 points, and four or possibly five hearts. Next hand passes and your partner now bids 1NT. What does this show? It must mean partner has spades; but is it a normal 1NT rebid with at least 15 points, or is it just the best partner can do with a minimum opening hand? 

There's no right or wrong answer here - but if you have a regular partner, it would certainly be worth a quick discussion to see if you're on the same wavelength. I won't tell you what actually happened when I had this hand last night, but it wasn't pretty!

Sandra

3.11.23

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We played our second match of the season against Blewbury Bridge Club on Thursday evening and I'm sorry to have to report that it all went a bit wrong.

Sometimes, matches start well and fall apart and sometimes they fall apart from board 1 and I think that this is what happened on this particular occasion.  Everything we did was wrong and, I have to say, grudgingly, they were all rather good!

Anyway, we picked up in the second half (how often have you read that?) but the final result was 17.32 - 2.68.  I voted against these ridiculous divided scores but was outvoted so there we are.

We have three more matches so all is not lost and I would like to thank the team:

Robert Gasser and Alison Withers Green

Dave Dobson and Linda Allen

Zahir Soonawalla and myself

Ann Lee and Erica Sheppard

Special thanks to Ann and Erica, who were initially reserves, but stepped in at the 11th hour!

Holly

19.11.23

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I'm delighted to report that the Wessex League A Team won their third match, which was against Banbury A on 27th February, scoring 10.71 to their 9.29VPs.  Although this may not seem like an outstanding result, Banbury has thus far, won all their other matches by a large margin and are leading the Division 2 league by a wide margin.

Although the end result is modest, Summertown were steaming ahead at half time due to two huge swings.  On board 6 both our pairs bid and made a vulnerable 4S whilst their pairs rested in a part score in diamonds.  Board 7 was a real coup when both our pairs bid and made 6D and their two pairs rested in game.

What do you bid when you 'pick up' this hand and your partner, as dealer, has opened 1D?

S: A

H: Q 6 3

D: A K 10 8 6 3

C: 10 7 3

One classy pair arrived at slam scientifically by cue bidding.  The other player holding the above hand, jumped directly to RKCB, delighted to find two aces, no Diamond Queen but confident that she would fall or could be finessed!

This was the opening hand:

S: Q 7

H: A K J 10

D: J 9 5 4 2

C: A 8

Many thanks to all the players:

Sandra Nicholson and Krys Kazmierczak

Robert Gasser and Alison Withers Green

Steven and Steph Bliss

Myself playing with Trevor Dawn

Huge thanks, too to Erica Sheppard and Betty Dick who stepped in at the 11th hour as reserves.

Holly

28.2.24

After a long battle with ill health, Irina Woods died peacefully in her sleep at Sobell House on 2nd March. 

She was a longstanding and regular player at Summertown and a delightful character. She first came to the club with Paul Stevenson, in the days when we played at St Peter’s Church Hall at Wolvercote. She loved to speak her native German with those of us who speak German. She had many endearing qualities, was hugely interested in people, saw the good side in everybody and took newcomers under her wing.  She had a difficult but interesting life, was a linguist and had been a keen tennis player. 

She came to our final face-to-face session at Maison Francaise in December and found the strength to get up and thank the club for all the happy times it had given her.

She will be hugely missed by all her friends and fellow bridge players.   Our condolences go to her beloved son, daughter and grandchildren.  Her son asks that anybody wishing to make donations in her memory should do so to https://sobellhouse.org/donations/.  She will be laid to rest in Corsica with her twin sister.

Your committee met recently and discussed table money and collection methods.  After considering the cost of running online sessions, and looking at the bank balance, we decided to reduce the table money to £2.50 from the start of March.  We hope you will appreciate this and that it will encourage others to come and play.  The collection method (advance booking via BookWhen) will continue, as this is the most practical for us.

We have another plan to encourage more people to attend.  If you arrange to play with somebody who has never played at Summertown or at least not played since before 1st January 2023, we will offer you and your partner a free game.  Please email ericasheppard5@gmail.com if you wish to take advantage of this opportunity, giving the date when you wish to play and your partner's name and email address.

If you can think of anything else that might encourage new people to play in our online games, do let us know.

Erica 21.2.24

We have donated the remaining Summertown BC equipment - tables, sets of boards, dealing machine, bridgemates etc - to junior bridge.  Joan Bennett, who is both Oxfordshire Youth Officer and National Youth Officer met a few of us at Maison Francaise and took it all away.  She has already found grateful recipients for many of the items, and we are pleased that it is all going to a good home.

SBC Committee

11.1.24

Here is what Sue Johnson, of New Tricks Bridge says: I just wanted to say a very big thank you from all of the children that we teach at New Tricks for your generous donation of the dealing machine and other equipment.

If you scored 55% in the club game at Summertown on 5th or 12th February, you are entitled to enter the Regional Finals of the National Pairs on 24th March. For details follow this link:

https://www.ebu.co.uk/competitions/national-pairs#: :text=2024%20National%20Final,6.00pm%20on%20the%20Sunday.

Oxfordshire is changing the format for 2024 to generate more entries and interest. Any club pairs duplicate in the weeks commencing 19th November, 3rd December or 7th January entitle pairs with 50% or more to play in one of three County Pairs Semifinals.

For players whose clubs do not have a regular pairs duplicate or for pairs unable to play in their own club heats (players should only play in their own club heats) there is a County Heat on Thursday 30th November (RealBridge, cost £3 per player) open to all. PLEASE ENTER IN ADVANCE

The  semifinal dates are Thursday 1st February 7pm, Sunday 11th February 2pm, Monday 19th February 7pm (24-26 boards, MPs at National Scale, £4 per player, all on RealBridge). In proportion to players in each semifinal there will be a 10 table final on Sunday 17th March 2pm (38 boards, Green points awarded, £9 per player, again on RealBridge).

Thanks to the generosity of everyone playing on 11th December we raised £373 for Homeless Oxfordshire!