Western Cape Bridge News - September / October 2021

Friday, 01 October 2021 by Brian Paxton

This is the seventh monthly bridge update from the Western Cape Bridge Union (WCBU). Further information on all the bridge topics covered can be found on this website.

As I gathered the information for this newsletter, I was struck by how much things have changed for us bridge players in eighteen short months. Back then we played parochially at our local clubs. Now, Covid and the Internet have turned us into one big South African bridge family where town and provincial boundaries have ceased to exist. See if you come to the same conclusion as you read on.......

The annual Western Cape Pairs Tournament is scheduled for 23rd and 24th October 2021; players from around the country are encouraged to click here to enter this and other red masterpoint events. The Western Cape's Impala Open, also a red masterpoint event, will take place on Sunday, 21st November 2021 using RealBridge. Two other red point events in the offing are The Greyville on 9th and 10th October and the Outeniqua Open teams competition on 27th and 28th November organised by the KZN and Southern Cape Bridge Unions respectively. Back in the old pre-Covid days, one would have expected more than 90% of the players at all these tournaments to be local but, as you run your finger down the player lists each time, you will see names from across the nation. Last month, for instance, the SBU's Heidi Atkinson pairs' and the Eastern Cape's Naomi Solomon teams' top prizes were all won by Gauteng players.

Speaking of winners, Colette Stott and Phil King won the September Warwick Wealth Tuesday pairs competition with a massive average of 62.72%. The prize for the player with the median average score - that's the person with the same number of people getting higher and lower scores - ended in a triple tie. Well done to all of you! The results each week can be found on our website Results page. We encourage more people to join the Tuesday gang and win prizes.

That's not the end of the prize winners. The xxx team was the winner  of the "A" section of the September edition of the Personal Trust JM Bridge RealBridge Teams competition while in the "B" section, the yyy team was out ahead. The attached brochure gives details of the October competition, where generous prizes will again be on offer and which will take place on Thursdays 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th October. To enter, please contact Mark Kenyon ([email protected]). Each week's results can be found on the JM Bridge page.

That's not the end of the prize winners. The King team was the winner  of the "A" section of the September edition of the Personal Trust JM Bridge RealBridge Teams competition while in the "B" section, the Holman team was out ahead. The brochure gives details of the October competition, where generous prizes will again be on offer and which will take place on Thursdays 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th October. To enter, please contact Mark Kenyon ([email protected]). Each week's results can be found on the JM Bridge page.

Carol Stanton's first Zoom / RealBridge bridge course for beginners got rave reviews from the 40 attendees from around the country and we have used the feedback from that in making improvements for the second course which started this week with pupils located from Leopard Rock to Sea Point, as well as places in between. We are particularly grateful to the mentors who look over the shoulders of the students playing hands on RealBridge and to Arie Ridderhof and Rod Pienaar further up the coast for their assistance in designing the course. We are all working together on follow up courses that can be delivered online or face to face. At the same time, we are compiling a directory of South African bridge teachers who can take the beginners to the next level of proficiency (teachers can contact me for inclusion).

Also, as part of our program to improve bridge skills, we each weekend use the WCBU website to post brief commentary on WCBU hands played the previous week (we feel hands players have actually played are more instructive than hands contrived by newspaper columnists to suit their argument) and provide five new problems from Victor Mollo's Winning Double in the New section on our Learn Bridge page. While those resources might suit intermediate players, new players are encouraged to read a new article each day from Andrew Robson's Beginners' Corner - just ignore those on bidding as his audience mainly play using the Acol system and not the Standard American system most South African players use.

What else has been happening in our busy bridge world? Our 10 board mini tournaments on BBO on Wednesday evenings at 20h00 are slowly picking up steam, while we now have a pool of more than 80 players - including several from small Karoo towns - playing in our Friday novice pairs for players with a BBO ranking of 2+ or less (from October we are raising the limit to 3 BBO points or less to encourage more participants). The daily afternoon BBO teams, organised by the JM Club, likewise draws players from far and wide - so much so that the Tuesday event has been dubbed the 'GBU Teams'.

After receiving our last month's newsletter, some of you commented on the interesting Internet statistics we quote. Here's a new one: of the 357 players who have played in WCBU pairs in the last two months, less than 60% are recorded as living in the Western Cape, with 19% in Gauteng and 7% in Kwazulu Natal.

As I reflected at the beginning of this newsletter, Covid and the Internet have made us one large - and hopefully happy - South African virtual bridge club. It will be interesting to see what happens when we go back to playing face to face as some are already doing. At that time clubs might have to consolidate their online sessions with those of other clubs in order to ensure there is a critical mass of players competing in each session, much as Hermanus and Benoni East bridge clubs have been doing since the start of lockdown. We are already liaising with the smaller unions and with clubs seeking online partnerships.

Continuing with the usage statistics from our website, of our 718 September website visitors who read 4,846 pages of information, 80% live in South Africa and 48% in Cape Town, 11% in Gauteng and 7% in Chicago. Visits have been recorded from people living in America (9%), the United Kingdom (4%), China (3%), Germany, Australia, Canada, France, Greece and the Netherlands. The most popular pages were, not unexpectedly, the home page and the results page. Other popular pages were the JM Bridge club page (where players go to enter RealBridge events), the News page about the Intermediate workshops and Learn Bridge page.  Some 50% of visitors come directly to the website either because they know the address or have an E-mail link; 47% come as a result of a Google search; and just 3% via links on the SABF, Hermanus, Pianola and other websites. Some 63% of visitors use desktop or laptop computers; 30% mobile phones; and 8% tablets. That's enough statistics for this month!

We are very conscious that the pandemic has meant bridge administrators have not been able to mingle with players at clubs to pick up feedback and suggestions. Newsletters such as this are one way communication from us to you; we really need to hear more from you so we can make sure we meet your changing bridge needs as we come to terms with Covid and its aftermath. Please keep your comments rolling in!

Finally, we look forward to encountering you at the WCBU virtual bridge tables in the days ahead.

Stay safe and enjoy your bridge