Thursday Bridge Club meetings are suspended with immediate effect until further notice.

Thursday Bridge Club

On-line play

Like other clubs in the area, the Committee has been looking at the possibility of finding a dedicated on-line facility for members to play as a simulacrum of a normal session.

In connection with another club, I’ve played Bridgclublive and, while we can set up an affiliation with our club, it provides no guarantee of playing with members only. As far as I can see it’s not so very different from playing as an individual or partnership, therefore there’s no particular advantage in setting up this facility.

BBO does, I believe, provide the facility for running a private club, however, when I enquired about this, I received the following reply: ‘We are very sorry but BBO has system overload problems. We have reached maximum capacity for almost everything. We have stopped giving hosting rights (temporarily) to anyone, until our tech team manages to stabilize the system.’ Under the circumstances this is not a surprise. There’s also a question as to whether a club as small as ours would have the critical mass to justify a private club on BBO.

The position with BBO will be kept under review but, for the moment, we see no advantage in trying to establish our own on-line playing facility.

Members may already have received notice of the EBU’s own arrangements with BBO: https://www.ebu.co.uk/node/3738. Once you’ve registered with BBO, the EBU link appears in the messages column on the right of the BBO Home page https://www.bridgebase.com/v3/ (this takes you to the login/registration page). There is, incidentally, a BBO club specifically for ACOL players. After login, from the home page click on: Casual/Public and Private Clubs/aacol.

If you’re not familiar with BBO the EBU have produced a guide to getting started https://www.ebu.co.uk/ebuscore-wiki/bboinstructions.

Best

Eric van Duffelen

Chairman

PS – I’ve tried the links and all I can say is that they work for me!

24th March 2020

The Thursday Bridge Club

Covid-19

As we all know, the Covid-19 crisis is worsening by the day and almost all major sporting events have been cancelled or postponed. Until yesterday, the EBU’s advice had been, effectively, to play while taking due care, but yesterday afternoon it changed its advice to the following:

‘Clubs we advise to follow government/PHE instructions. If you are unable to comply for whatever reason (inability to observe social distancing, inadequate sanitation) then we strongly advise closure pro tem.’

The Committee already had the subject under urgent discussion, but this has clarified the thinking. There were existing concerns about contact with potentially infected third parties and the general vulnerability of the bridge playing population and their partners  As I understand the new advice, however, it is inherently impossible for four people sitting round a bridge table to comply with the government’s social distancing criterion (which is, I believe, two metre separation).

For these reasons and in the light of the EBU’s advice, we have decided to suspend play at The Thursday Bridge Club with immediate effect and sine die. A notice will shortly appear on our web-site to that effect.

A separate decision will be made about competitions which are due to be played during the period of suspension.

The EBU for one, are looking at the possibility of organised play on-line and details will no doubt appear on the EBU’s web-site www.ebu.co.uk. For those who may not know about it, you can also get or organise an on-line game at www.bridgebase.com – registration is free.

This is an unfortunate and regrettable but, I fear, inevitable step. The Committee will keep you informed of developments during the period of suspension, and we will reinstate play as soon as it is felt to be safe to do so.

I look forward to seeing you all again later in the year.

Best

Eric van Duffelen

Chairman

16 March 2020