| Charity collection |
Thanks to the generosity of everyone who was playing on 11th December, we collected £373 for Homelessness Oxfordshire. If anyone else wants to make a contribution or find out more about this charity, their contact address is homelessnessoxfordshire.uk
Thanks also to those who organized the Summertown Christmas party. Like all Summertown parties, it was a relaxed and happy event, though this time tinged with sadness as we greeted old friends face to face for possibly the last time.
Moira
12.12.23
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| Photos from the 2023 Christmas party |
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| News from your committee |
Your committee met on 7th November and decided that, sadly, our face-to-face sessions at Maison Francaise are no longer viable and will be discontinued after a Christmas party on 11th December. We are sorry to bring you this news and extremely grateful to those who have continued to support us, who will be no doubt be disappointed.
In order to keep the club going we propose to hold RealBridge sessions (open to both members and non-members) at 7 pm on Monday evenings, starting on 1st January. Stephen Brown is going to direct for us, and we hope you will join us in order to keep in touch with your old friends.
8.11.23
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| Bridge at SBC this autumn |
The SBC committee met in early September and we plan to continue as we are, playing face-to-face every Monday at Maison Francaise, with two small changes.
1. We will once again be charging table money (£4). This means you must register and pay your table money in advance, using our Bookwhen system.
2. We will be introducing a different form of scoring with immediate effect - cross-imping. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it is like teams scoring, i.e. bid marginal vulnerable games and don’t worry about overtricks. The reason for using this form of scoring is that, with a relatively small number of tables, results on each board will be less polarised than at present.
We still need your support, so please keep coming and bring your friends!
Erica 6.9.23
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| Photos from the 2023 Christmas party |
Click here to see photos taken by Kati di Gleria.
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| The future |
The SBC committee met recently to look at the attendance numbers we've been having during July, when we've been running free sessions to try to persuade more players to join us on Monday evenings.
The result so far has been encouraging, and we're really grateful to those of you who've been supporting us - but if the club is to survive, we have to keep up the improvement. So now we need you to continue to come as often as you can, and maybe bring a friend. All standards of duplicate players are welcome, as long as they can keep up with our average speed.
For the time being we still won't be charging table money, but we do ask you please to register so that we know how many people to expect. We do need at least three tables for a viable session so if we don't have that many registered, unfortunately we'll need to cancel that session.
Erica 26.7.23
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| The future |
We had an extended discussion on the the future of the Club at the recent AGM, and the committee has just met to discuss the comments and suggestions made.
As members will know from the email I sent recently, we've decided to have a positive effort to bump up numbers. Our sessions on the five Mondays in July which will be completely free of charge, for both members and visitors. All members of the Oxfordshire Bridge Association will get a message inviting anybody to attend during July and see if they like our club. We're still asking everyone - including members - to register in advance for each session, so that we know how many people to expect.
The committee will meet again at the end of July for a further review.
Erica
17.6.23
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| Summertown Bridge Club AGM |
The Club will hold its AGM at Maison Francaise at 7 pm on Monday 5th June. Drinks and nibbles will be available. Members will receive papers by email two weeks in advance. Please come along to talk about the future of the club!
The AGM will be followed by as much bridge as we can fit in, competing for the David Bygott Midsummer Pairs Trophy. There will be no charge for members but if you plan to play, you are encouraged to register via the link above so that we have an idea of numbers both for catering purposes and for the bridge.
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| David Bygott |
 Our former Chairman, David Bygott, died at home on Easter Saturday, 8th April, after a long illness with his wife, Annette, by his side.
David was a very long standing member of Summertown and put a great deal into the club. He was Chairman and Chief Tournament Director for some three years until 2002. He was on the committee before becoming chairman and remained on the committee for a year or two after 2002. For some time, primarily during the club's spell at St Peter's Church Hall in Wolvercote, he seemed to organise everything, doing all the directing and scoring - with assistance from his son Jeremy. Over the years he partnered Jeremy and also Holly, as well as others. When he stepped down as Chairman, the David Bygott Midsummer Pairs Trophy was instituted and indeed we had already decided to run this event this year - on 5th June.
David had great enthusiasm for bridge, wrote entertaining newsletters for the club and for the OBA and encouraged our participation in the Wessex League. Many of us have memories of the quizzes he loved to devise for our Christmas parties.
Our condolences go to Annette, and to Jeremy & family. The funeral and celebration of David’s life was held on Friday 12th May. Those that wish to, may make a donation in David's memory to Marie Curie via: https://davidbygott.muchloved.com.
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| Bridge Bulletin |
It's hard to believe that the first UK lockdown began almost exactly three years ago. A lot of online cards have been played since then, and without a doubt, many more will be: but at least for now, Summertown is going back to Face-to-Face only.
As you probably know, this is going to be our very last Bridge Bulletin, as it's much more difficult to write about the hands when you can't go through all the bidding and play at all tables. This final "issue" has been very kindly written for us by Cliff Pavelin, who also directed last night's RealBridge session. Many thanks to Cliff, and to all the other Bulletin writers (James, Krys, Roger, Steven, and Trevor) who have informed and entertained us every week for nearly two and a half years.
So, as they say, it's goodbye from them, and it's goodbye from me, at least with my Bulletin Editor hat on!
Enjoy the spring, everyone, and most of all, don't stop enjoying your bridge - whether it's F2F or online :-)
All the very best to you all as always
Sandra 28.3.23
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| Tom Brus |
We are very sad to report the death of Tom Brus on 20th March in Warsaw. He had been a member of Summertown since 2013. He loved his bridge, and I remember him talking about translating a Polish bridge book into English.
We are sending the club's condolences to his wife and sister.
Erica 23.3.23
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| Summer bridge |
Your committee met in early March to discuss our bridge over the next few months. As you know, we have one more RealBridge session on a Monday evening (27th March), and then the following three months will be face-to-face at Maison Francaise. Special thanks go to Cliff who has directed many of our online sessions at no cost to the club.
To encourage you to come along and join us face-to-face, we are starting the three months with drinks and nibbles before bridge on Monday 3rd April. The bridge session will be free for members as a reward for your loyalty, but we still ask you to register online as usual to give us an idea of numbers. Non-members are welcome, but we ask that they register online and pay for a non-member ticket.
We need those of you who can do so to volunteer one evening when you are prepared to host. Please let Erika Syba (erika.sybaatbtinternet.com) know what dates you can manage.
The start of full-time face-to-face means that we have decided to stop issuing weekly bridge bulletins. These are simply too difficult to write when one can't see all the bidding and play, as is possible for online sessions. I personally have greatly enjoyed these bulletins, and I hope you have too. Special thanks to Sandra for organising them, and to the team of bulletin writers: Sandra & Krys, Steven, Cliff, Roger and James.
A few of you do not feel able to return to F2F, and some of you like a mixture of F2F and online. Although we won't be offering an online option ourselves over the summer, we have been in contact with Banbury Bridge Club, which meets online on a Thursday evening, and they are very happy to welcome additional players. We encourage you to consider playing there: here is a link to their website
https://www.bridgewebs.com/banbury/
You simply click on the link on the website to play, and they collect table money at a later date.
Here is another date for your diary: on Monday 5th June we will be holding our AGM at Maison Francaise at 7 pm, followed by the Midsummer Pairs Competition for the Bygott Trophy. Papers for the AGM will follow in due course.
Erica 17.3.23
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| F2F bridge - newsflash |
Your committee met recently and decided to try going back to face-to-face bridge every week. We have negotiated with Maison Francaise, who have offered us our usual room every week for an initial period of three months (April to June), with a small possibility of having to cancel on one or two occasions during this period. We believe it is the venue which you particularly like so have accepted this offer. As the days get longer, we look forward to welcoming even more of you back! Further news will follow after our next committee meeting in early March.
We have two F2F sessions in February (13th and 27th) and two in March (13th and 20th), and the remaining sessions will be on RealBridge - see calendar for clarification.
Erica 3.2.23
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| Bridge in 2023 |
When your committee met recently, we decided to carry on for the time being with our current system of approximately half face-to-face and half online on RealBridge. Do please attend as many of these events as you can - we need your support!
In January, Maison Francaise are unable to offer us our usual evenings, so we will have just one face-to-face event, on the fifth Monday, 30th. The other four Mondays will be on RealBridge.
In February we will return to second and fourth Mondays (13th and 27th) at Maison Francaise, first and third (6th and 20th) on RealBridge.
In March we will play face-to-face at Maison Francaise on the second and third Mondays (13th and 20th), first and fourth Mondays (6th and 27th) on RealBridge.
Erica 12.2.23
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| Cherwell Collective |
Those present at our party on 12th December donated £250 to our nominated charity, Cherwell Collective. Other members have made donations online. Their Managing Director has sent the attached letter of thanks and asked me to share it with all you generous people.
If anyone would still like to make a donation here is the link to the relevant page of their website.
https://www.cherwellcollective.com/about-us/
The organisation has the dual objective of helping to reduce our carbon footprint and support disadvantaged individuals in the local area.
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