Sydney Bridge Centre

Message from the Chairman

Last time I wrote to you, I promised that, at its meeting on the 15th April, the NSWBA Council would review the decision to close the club. The closure was discussed at length last night (via Zoom, of course!).

The policy agreed was that the club will remain closed until the government regulations allow the gathering of people without the 1.5 metre social distancing requirement. This is likely to be several months.

Media reports suggest that the regulations will be initially eased for younger age groups but maintained for the 70+ age group, our main demographic. When this occurs, the Council will approach the NSW Department of Health to seek guidance on reopening the club for face to face bridge.

Meanwhile, the club is exploring ways of offering online games for you. A guide for online bridge has been compiled by one of our Tournament Directors, Johnno Newman. It has a tree structure with two initial branches, BBO & Other resources. Click on a branch to explore it. We intend to improve this guide over time to make it easier for our members to access and enjoy online bridge.  If you have suggestions on improvements or additions to the guide, please communicate with Wing in the Office at office@nswba.com.au.

One of our Councillors is in negotiations to provide mechanisms for the affiliated clubs to offer their members regular online duplicate sessions that provide masterpoints. The Sydney Bridge Centre / NSWBA is anticipating offering such sessions for a nominal cost in the near future.  We will email you and also post on our website when these become available.

John Scudder

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In short, this means:

• Day 2 of the State Daytime Pairs on Friday 20th March is CANCELLED
• the next Workshop on 10th April is currently CANCELLED
• All Club sessions at Rozelle, Henley & the City venues are CANCELLED

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
For more details regarding our closure, please read this statement.

Want “up-to-date” information about Covid-19 in Australia?
Try https://www.health.gov.au/

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PLEASE NOTE Rozelle’s Wednesday morning Lesson now starts at 9:45am

Congratulations to:

Under “Results” is a new sub menu – Masterpoint Rank Promotions – which I hope to list the latest Rank Promotions of our members. The February 2020 list is below. Watch out for regular updates.

Player of the Month – January

Sunday Game

Bushfire Appeal

Intra Venue and New Year Matchpoint Series Champs

<100 Masterpoint Pairs Champs

Will’s Workshops: March to May

Please note the confirmed dates for the next three workshops: Fri March 13th, Fri April 10th and Fri May 8th.

Our Wednesday lessons have been specially written to reinforce the themes from the preceding workshop.

Christmas Party Photos

The SBC Christmas Party attracted over 300 players – our morning sessions were fully booked days before the party! We were pleased to see more players in the Supervised session (there were 16 tables in the morning supervised session!), while the table number in the Open field remained steady. We hope you had a wonderful time! Who counts calories in Christmas?? Of course we had tons for morning / afternoon teas, lunch and dinner – minced pie, cinnamon star, stollen, iced christmas cake, chicken & ham for lunch, turkey and beef for dinner, a varieties of salads and vegetarian lasagnes, plum pudding balls with custard, panettone, ooohhhhh, and that pavlova topped with whipped cream and mango & mixed berries…. Good Food, Food Friends and Good Times. A lot of competitions were introduced to our club players this year. Time to recognise their achievement! Winners are grinners, and we are especially proud that so many different players shone in their own categories. Congratulations and well done! Christmas is a time to share. Thank you very much for all of you in supporting the Toys & Books Appeal for The Smiths Family. We have passed on all the donations to charity. We are planning to have a Congress with “Christmas in July” as the theme next July, so keep an eye on our announcements and don’t miss it.

This was held Sunday 1st Dec, in the City. I would like to thank all who attended. I believe all had a good day, and congratulations to the outright winners on the day – Gale Spalvins & Joanne Morgan, who achieved over 70% on the day.

We will all eagerly await the final placings once the Results have been amortized over the State.

Melbourne Cup Day

Strong Results in the Spring Nationals

Your State Open Pairs Representatives are

Ron Dight and Gillian Carter

Cate Whittaker and Cheryl Henke

Robert Vadas and Graeme Haley

Jane Biscoe and Kevin Judd

Neil Morris and Grethe Mercer

Orsolina Aroney & Rod Dunn

Sari Larsen and Beth Haggerty

Nigel Cadogan and Judith Davey

Please give these people your enthusiastic support as they will represent SBC in this event.

Rozelle STATE OPEN PAIRS QUALIFYING

Rozelle FINAL Results after Week 3 of Qualifying are now on our SBC website under “Results” & then select “Special Events Results” or press here

Our Good Support programme – Bridge for a Good Cause

Each quarter the club management select 3 charities based on recommendations from our members. Winners of our club duplicate sessions are given a card with their name on it to cast as a vote to their preferred charity. At the end of each quarter, the charity which received the most votes receives a $300 donation from the club, and the other two charities receive $100 each. To thank our players for supporting this programme, we will draw 3 winners (one major winner and two secondary winners) from the players’ voting cards. The major winner of Q3 is David Moont from Rozelle, congratulations! Thank you all of you in supporting this charity programme and bridging for a good cause!

Good Support

Good Support Winners have been announced for July to August. To see the winners, go to http://www.sydneybridgecentre.com/sbc-good-support-program/ or press here

Success at Hunters Hill
Well done to SBC members Vicky Cahill, Teresa Wilson, Ken Cahill and Paul Roach, who won the Hunters Hill Restricted Teams. “Not too shabby for a bunch of amateurs!” – Paul

Stroke Awareness Day

Over $1200 was raised for the Stroke Recovery Association NSW on our Stroke Awareness Day.

The Raffle was drawn and won for a Free Game with Matt Smith, who last year won the International Youth Hand of the year; and in the International Youth Open Championships, Matt came second in the Pairs & 4th in the Teams. The winner was Ruth Collins. Second was won by Faith Blake & third was won by Kelly Gibson. Each won either a FREE all day workshop run by Will Jenner O’Shea or 2 bottles of wine (see the photos below).

Stroke Awareness Day Photos

CITY STATE OPEN PAIRS QUALIFYING

*** CITY – FINAL Combined results are now on our SBC website under “Results” & then select “Special Events Results” or press here

INDIVIDUAL CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS (to date)

Up to date results are now available under “Pianola – Competitions” on the righ hand side of this page, or under “Results” & then select “Special Events Results” or press here

Once at the Competitions page, select the appropriate 1 of the 6 Individual Championships to see how you are going.

The initial view will only show those who have played 10 or more times, but to view everyone (if you have not yet played 10 times), on the title line which says “All Results”, select on the right hand side “All Results” rather than the “Qualified Only” & anyone who has played at least once in that level of the Competition will be shown.

Some of the more important conditions are also listed at the top of each Competition.

You can look up how you are going as often as you like…. good luck & have fun

Sad news: The Monday Night Session at Rozelle has finished. The last session was Monday night – 12^th August

All other Rozelle sessions are as normal, including Thursday Night, which starts at 7:15pm.

There are also Tuesday & Thursday Evening sessions in the City, and there is the Monday Night NSWBA competitions which each run for 2 to 4 weeks normally.

There is free parking in Oxford St & surrounds after 7pm, or $10 Parking at the Parking Station on the corner of Goulburn & Elizabeth Sts in the city after 6pm.

***NEW COMPETITION***

We are launching an Individual Championship with SIX divisions.

Each division will run from 1st July (yes, it has started) to the 30th November, and each winner will receive $100 Prize Money (split if a tied score) at the Christmas Party in December.

In each Division, we will count your 10 BEST results from 1/7/19 to 30/11/19. You play more than that, and the worst scores get dropped off. You do not need to play with the same partner. All scores in the appropriate sessions count!

The divisions will be by your Masterpoint Ranking as of the 30th November.

There are TWO divisions for the Supervised Sessions:

–          Nil & Graduate Ranks

–          Club Rank

There are FOUR divisions for the Open Sessions:

–          Nil, Graduate & Club Ranks

–          Local, *Local, **Local Ranks

–          Regional, *Regional, State, *State Ranks

–          National & above Ranks

All OPEN club sessions will be included except Monday Night at Rozelle & Thursday Night & Sunday Games in the City. Selected small field sessions will also be excluded.

Keep an eye out for more details being released soon.

Not sure of your current Masterpoint Rank? You can look it up at http://www.abfmasterpoints.com.au/myawards.asp

SBC Name Badges

We are rolling out SBC Name Badges (again) starting this week (4th Aug)

You may have seen them already? They look great!

We will be making & handing out SBC name badges for FREE, for all our Members who come & play in any club session this week at Rozelle or in the City starting Monday.

Each current Member is entitled to one FREE SBC Name Badge. So, want your name badge? Then come & join us for a game.

Want an EXTRA Name Badge, or not a Member but want a Name Badge anyway? These will cost $5.00 while we introduce the badges. They will normally be $5.50.

Jeans For Genes Day

Thank you everyone for a great day, plus we raised $119.85 for the Jeans for Genes Organisation. Here are some of the photos from the day below.

Let’s talk about the Library

We have also been working to resuscitate the library.

It has been moved to a more accessible location beside the dealing room. Once fully sorted & categorised, we will begin adding some new titles shortly. Borrowing will be on an honor system, where you will need to record your borrowing from, and returning back, into the library “Borrower’s book”, which will be located at the library.

 If anyone has any recent Bridge Books they would consider donating to us, that would be great to help kick-start the library.

Cancer Council Raffle Draw

3rd prize Peggy Johnson – a bottle of bubbly

And a big thank you to everyone for your support. We raised over $1200.00 for Cancer Council, and had a lot of fun with it along the way, which is simply fantastic.

Australia Wide Novice Pairs

Thank you everyone for your support. I hope everyone had an enjoyable day. The National Results will be posted up through https://australianbridge.com/ so over the next few weeks keep having a look. As the competition finishes on 31st, our results can be available next week on our Pianola results.

Congratulations to our

• overall winners North-South being Martyn Jones & Lyall Kennedy on 59.77%
• “Under 50MP winners North-South being Penny Talley & Anne Moase on 55.51%
• overall winners East West being Clare Ainsworth & Mary Poynten on 65.83%
• “Under 50MP winners East-West being Marg Roden & Noeline Dresser on 55.57%

All of those people will be able to pick up a Certificate from the Office, plus a book prize.

We also announced the closest to 50% would also get a book prize. This was won by Richard Thode & Anne Milson, with a score of ……… exactly 50.00%

When the National results are compiled, you may see your score to be different to that achieved in the club. This can happen – both up or down – once results are compared nationally.Results are expected to be finalised on the 10th June, at this time.

Cancer Council Tea

So far we’ve raised more than $800 from the raffle tickets and donations! We are aiming to raise $1000 – players still have chance to support by purchasing the $5 raffle draw tickets and enter the lucky draw of the “best prizes ever”:

1st prize: A Game and brief review afterwards with Warren Lazer as your Partner (multiple times Australian Representative)
2nd prize: A gourmet hamper
3rd prize: a bottle of bubbly


Raffle prizes will be drawn at the Teams of Three on Sunday 2nd June.

STATE Mixed Pairs Reps for SBC
For ROZELLE, Congratulations to:
– Cheryl Barrett & Rod Dunn
– Orsolina Aroney & Nader Esber

For the CITY, Congratulations to:
– Ellen Borda & Mick McAuliffe
– Stuart Grigg & Jacky Gruszka
These 4 Pairs will represent us at the State Mixed Pairs in end of May.


For the HENLEY, Congratulations to the Qualifiers:
– Kevin Judd & Jane Biscoe
– Terry O’Callaghan & John Bellingham

GNOT Representatives for SBC
Congratulations to:
– Ed Truscott & Mike Edwards
– Max & Kathy Gilbert
– Clare Ainsworth & Mary Pynten
– Brian Jacobson & Mick McAuliffe

These 4 Pairs will form 2 Teams to represent us at the GNOT Regional in September.
Please give them your support and encouragement

March Monthly Results
The March Monthly Results for Player of the Month, Most Improved & “Over 70’s Club” can be found HERE.

Night sessions now run from 7:15-10pm
We polled our regular night players and found that the overwhelming majority are in favour of an earlier start and finish. A 7:15pm start should allow players a chance to arrive and park, but also get way at ten o’clock.

GNOT Provisional Final Results
Provisional Results have been posted in “Results – Special Events Results”, as well as at the City Venue. Congratulations to all who participated. We hope you enjoyed.

State Mixed Pairs Qualifying Starts Mon 1st & Tues 2nd April Please see The “What’s on in April” Flyer either on the Right under “What’s on” or Under “Promotions & Events – What’s On In…” .

State Novice and Restricted Pairs
Congrats Maeve and Di – State Champions! An honourable mention to Ken and Paul, who came third in the State Restricted Pairs:

OneClub Newsletter
Click on the image to view the newsletter: