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10th January 2021
The recent uplift in bridge playing online has been reported by the Sunday Times 10th January 2021, noting that many younger people are now getting into online bridge.
The article can be found here. Please contact the YCBA to discuss how your bridge club can be involved.
5th January 2021
The first online YCBA ‘New Year Bonanza‘ event was well supported by more than 280 players over the three sessions on 1st and 2nd January 2021. Congratulations go to the winners as follows:
Swiss Pairs
With 74 pairs taking part, top slot went to Liz Wickens and David Donaldson who finished with a total of 96 VPs
Swiss Teams
Joint first place of the 26 teams went to the Hughes and Clarke teams each with a total of 83 VPs
Hughes Team – Arthur Hughes, Dave Bank, Sandy Davies, Tom Gisborne
Clarke Team – Stuart Clarke, Sue Woodcock, Nick Woodcock, Sue Fjortoft
9 High Pairs
Top N/S Pair was Sue Boden and Lyn Aldous with 56.02%, and top E/W pair was Janet Styles and Sarah Brown with 62.96%
Full results for each session can be found via the Pianola events calendar using the Pianola Listed entry under the Results menu
22nd December 2020
See our YCBA Chairman’s latest blog which includes a review of the year and a look forward to 2021.
The update can be found here , or via ‘About YCBA +‘ menu
22nd December 2020
As we draw towards the end of 2020, I thought I would reflect on what has been an ‘interesting‘ year in our bridge world and offer some reminders of what we have to come.
For some of you, the world of on-line bridge would be familiar but for a lot of us it was not and at the start the YCBA was still trying to wrap its collective head around about how we were going to grasp this new nettle. There were different platforms to choose from with the promise of more to come, the idea of virtual clubs, the spectre of cheating to worry about and lastly and most importantly how could we encourage our clubs and members to get on-line.
To this end I feel that we have been relatively successful. Some recent figures have shown that whilst we have fewer players playing on-line, they are playing more often and that is certainly true for myself. The advent of the Yorkshire League on-line has meant that we could get over 500 players playing over a series of Sundays and this is the biggest league on the EBU results page, a testament to the organisers and yourselves for wanting to take part. The board has continued to try and come up with events that will appeal to a wide selection of our membership and of course we have still been able to run the Great North Pairs, Harrogate Spring Congress and (hopefully) the Northern Easter Festival for the EBU. Just as a plug if you have not already seen the HSC flyer it will be on the 13th/14th February with pairs (including a 9 high event) on the Saturday and Teams on the Sunday. Both events will be green pointed, so get those entries in now. It would be remiss of me to not remind you of another event we have over the New Year period. On Friday 1st January we have pairs and the 2nd will be teams. Both events will be Blue pointed and we have called it the New Year Bonanza (It was going to over the Xmas period but we had to change it!). All our events are advertised on the website, so this should always be your primary source of information as the reminders for events only go out to members whose e-mails we have and the club secretaries.
One of our prime concerns has been the fact that the teaching of both beginners and year 1 and 2 players has really fallen of a cliff (especially the former). Obviously, new players who go on to join clubs and then play in stepping- stones events, club events or even national events at the appropriate level are the life blood of keeping the organisation (both local and national) on a viable basis. To this end we held a teacher’s meeting to try and understand what has happened and look to offer some solutions for those teachers who are reluctant to take up the ‘on-line’ option. Of course, we would all like the chance to teach face to face again but my crystal ball is a bit clouded at the moment and can only really see to about Easter and even then I am not sure whether we will be back!
This is a serious point because as and when we do start again there will be a significant number of clubs who may struggle to get their members back (who may want to stay on-line).This may lead to a new paradigm for bridge as we know it with an amalgam of on-line and face to face but for me the social interaction with other members, whom you may never see on-line, outweighs the sterile on-line approach (even with video links!). To this end, the YCBA are here to support both clubs and members moving forward and we hope to have some sort of fund available (similar to the technology fund from last time) to assist clubs in this transitional period.
It only leaves me to thank all of you who have entered our competitions, long may it continue and of course to wish you all a Christmas and New Year that you can make as special as the government allows you!
Keep well and stay safe,
Best wishes,
Nick Woolven (YCBA Chair)
22nd October 2020
Tuesday evening saw the YCBA’s first Virtual Charity Pairs event and it was won by Peter & Julie Milewski with an impressive 68.31%, ahead of Ralph Cornfield & Michael Franklin in 2nd place, with Richard Hilton & Pauline Cooper in 3rd place.
This event raised £200 for charity and the winners have chosen for the money to be donated to the Homeless Street Angels, a Leeds based charity providing food and clothing to those living on the streets of Leeds. They have a small group of volunteers giving up time to cook meals and put care packages together to give out each week helping those less fortunate. You can see more about their work here.
14th October 2020
The Tollemache Cup is the inter-county championships for teams of eight, with a qualifying round followed by a final for the top eight teams.
After careful consideration the selectors have settled on the 12 player team below for the Tollemache qualifier which will be played on the Real Bridge platform, 21st-22nd November.
Tony McNiff (C) Bill Townsend
Richard Winter Geoff Kenyon
Richard Pike David Waxman
Sarah Teshome Daniel Winter
Brian Senior Sandra Penfold
David Robinson Tony Sowter
Reserves: Frank Dixon and Paul Brereton
8th October 2020
Online play may initially be daunting, but one Yorkshire Bridge Club has exploited the global opportunity it offers.
After testing the water with a Scottish Club friendly in Spring, the enterprising Halifax BC executive decided to go reach out further and arranged two friendly matches on BBO; one with their namesake club, in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada and one with their twinned town of Aachen in Germany.
Both events attracted over ten tables and were thoroughly enjoyed by all participants.
So much so that both are repeating as “Autumn Internationals” in the coming weeks. (For details see www.bridgewebs.com/halifax/ ).
6th October 2020
The Great Northern Pairs was played this weekend 3rd and 4th October. Congratulations to the winners, Frank Dixon and Paul Brereton, with a combined score of 64% and a particularly impressive 67% in the first session. Also to the 2nd and 3rd place finishers, Ian and Julie Grant, Rob Ferrari and Mike Ash respectively. The Nine High Great Northern Pairs was won by Sue Wright and Jane Holdrick, with a score of 59%.
We would like to apologise for some confusion over the masterpoints, green points will be awarded for the Great Northern Pairs once we’ve finalised the totals, and will incorporate both session scores and final rankings. Please not that the session 2 scores may differ from those shown on BBO, as we had two sections playing the same boards and merged the results when calculating the final scores.
Results are available on Pianola, and a ranking report is also available here
22nd September 2020
A New Teachers’ Course for online teaching from EBED runs 22nd through 23rd October for both Club and Independent Bridge teachers,
Please register at https://www.ebedcio.org.uk/teach. For more info, contact Jacks Morecombe at jacqueline@ebedcio.org.uk.
The course presenter is Suzanne Gill.
9th September 2020
Scoring 134 VPs, the Yorkshire team managed a 2nd = place in the 2020 Presidents’ Cup. See ‘Other Results’ for further details.
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