This is the fifth monthly bridge update from the Western Cape Bridge Union (WCBU). Further information on all the topics covered can be found on this website.  As you read on, you will see how we are responding to your feedback in our survey.

The WCBU has a new president, Mark Kenyon, and vice-president, Michele Alexander. Andrew and Kitty Cruise have both stepped down from the committee but you will still encounter them playing in our tournaments. The committee thanks them both for their services to the game, particularly Kitty's, whose involvement with the WCBU has spanned a period of some forty years, no mean achievement.

Sadly, the Covid epidemic has taken the life of another Western Cape bridge stalwart, John van Niekerk, who died last week. John was a leading light in the Peninsula Bridge Club; on our website you can read the tribute written by his regular partner and friend.

On a much more positive note, the annual Western Cape Pairs Tournament is scheduled for 23rd and 24th October 2021 (you can access the brochure here) while the Impala Open, also a red masterpoint event, will take place on Sunday, 21st November 2021. In the meantime, the Southern Cape's Heidi Atkinson Memorial bridge pairs tournament will take place on 14th and 15th August while the Eastern Cape's Naomi Solomon Teams competiton takes place on 28th and 29th August. In this new era of borderless bridge, players from around the country are encouraged to click here to enter any or all of these events.

Personal Trust is the sponsor for the new, month long, Thursday night JM Bridge RealBridge Teams event where generous prizes are on offer. The brochure for the September competition is attached and we encourage teams to register early.

In previous newsletters, I have mentioned the success of our Friday tournaments for online duplicate novices. These go from strength to strength and we now have a pool of nearly 80 players taking part. Carol Stanton's Zoom / RealBridge bridge course for beginners got off to a brilliant start this week with more than 40 beginners taking part. We look forward to seeing them taking part in our Friday events once their six week course is over.

The brochure for the next course, which starts on Wednesday 29th September, is attached, and we encourage rank beginners to sign up early as we are limiting the numbers. In the meantime, Carol is looking for experienced players to volunteer as mentors to the players as they start out playing hands on RealBridge each week. This is a good forum for bridge teachers across South Africa to learn more about online bridge teaching through mentoring a session or two. You can contact Carol ([email protected]) for more details.

Other projects in the WCBU pipeline include evening mini tournaments lasting an hour; a training course for directors; and classes for intermediate players. More details will appear on our website in due course as well as in our next newsletters.

In line with international practice, the WCBU now allows Undo's on BBO for genuine misclicks during the bidding but not during the play in WCBU events. If you are someone whose mouse often misbehaves, then BBO provides two important settings which allow you to guard against mis-clicks – namely “Confirm bids” and “Confirm cards”.

Changing the subject slightly, barely a week goes by without the newspapers seizing on more action being taken against Google, Facebook and the other megadata companies for misusing the masses of personal information they have collected on just about everyone on the planet. Back in 2013, a reporter for the Guardian took advantage of Europe's equivalent of our new POPI act to ask one of the companies to provide details of the information it held on her - she was sent an 800 page document! At the time, the social media companies were primarily using the information to target advertising, but now they are capitalising on the research of Daniel Kahneman to manipulate our emotions and decision making. Watch for Mark Zuckerberg single handedly deciding on the next American president!

You will probably wonder what all this has to do with bridge playing? Well, we bridge players, like the social media giants, are information junkies. When a couple we have never encountered before arrives at our BBO table, we stare at their BBO ranking and wonder if it was earned by playing daily for years or because of winning ways. We scrutinize their bidding card and use the bidding to build a picture of the four hands. Once the dummy comes down and the play begins, we complete our data gathering. Apart from the ranking, it's not much different from the old days of face to face bridge.

The results of many of our tournaments are stored in Pianola or BridgeWebs website databases where we can analyse our performance over many sessions. Fortunately, your information is only available to you. Otherwise, if you knew that your new opponent only averaged 40% when declarer, would you start doubling more? Or if your opponents averaged 62.5% when defending, would you be more cautious in your bidding?

Of course, the really huge database is the one managed by BBO. Sometimes when I log on it shows there are more than 50,000 bridge players online competing at more than 20,000 tables. The hands, bidding and play are all stored away. I wonder if the BBO data gurus have ever tried to analyse all that data - what is the most popular contract? do players playing 2/1 really do better than those playing straight Standard American? who comes off best if Acol players with their weak no trumps and four card majors wander away from their UK roots and end up playing in American or South African tourneys? what are the major exceptions to the Law of Total Tricks? I am sure if you were the BBO data guru you would dream up a host of other queries.

Now we all know that Bill Gates is an avid bridge player. In fact, I understand he was one of the early sponsors of BBO.  Bill is still a director of Microsoft whose Windows software takes note of practically every keystroke and mouse move you make on your PC. I wonder if he didn't write the spec for the software to also analyse our every BBO activity, including our messages on BBO Chat, and accumulate those insights with all our other personal information to determine whether we are risk takers, deliberate thinkers, rule followers and a whole lot more? It just shows we need to be careful as we go about our online bridge - or in fact any online activity.

Speaking of which, the WCBU website continues to throw up interesting statistics. During July, the WCBU website was used by 649 people who made 1,802 visits during which they accessed 4,559 pages. As you would expect, the most popular pages were the home page and the results page. The other popular pages were the the JM Bridge club page (where players go to enter RealBridge events), News and Calendar pages.

Of our website visitors, 81% live in South Africa and 59% in Cape Town. Visits have been recorded from people living in  America (7%), the United Kingdom (4%), China (2%), Germany, Ireland, Australia and Israel. More than 56% come directly to the website either because they know the address or have an E-mail link; 41% come as a result of a Google search; and just 3% via links on the SABF, Hermanus, Pianola and other websites. Some 60% of visitors use desktop or laptop computers; 33% mobile phones; and 7% tablets. So, you see, even we are keeping tabs on your online activities!

If this monthly Western Cape Bridge news was forwarded to you by a friend and you would like to receive future copies, then please E-mail me. If you wish to unsubscribe, then please click on the unsubscribe link below. You can also access our terms and conditions, including compliance with the POPI Act, from the other link below.

Finally, we look forward to encountering you at the WCBU virtual bridge tables in the days ahead - and to hearing your comments and suggestions - please keep them rolling in!

Stay safe and enjoy your bridge

Brian Paxton aka papa bi

Western Cape Bridge Union Committee Member
[email protected]
https://www.wcbridge.co.za