Thursday 28 June 07

A five table full Howell Movement with a sit out.

Directed and Scored by Chris Cooper

Pos	Players	Score %
1	Stuart Warne & Christine Cooper	65.28
2	Alison Crowhurst & Peter Crowhurst	56.25
3 =	Pam Southern & Anne Pettitt	52.08
3 =	Marjorie Davies & Felicity White	52.08
5	Marion Dixon & Wendy Pattinson	51.39
6	John Tomalin & Keith Langley	50.69
7	Anne Carrington & Lucy Foster	47.22
8	Jean Soulier & John Day	40.28
9	Gus Nelson & Tony Pickering	34.72

Ashlawn Blog #3

In reply to Chris’s blog I did see the article in the EBU magazine. The article showed the usual arrogance that comes from that organisation, illustrated in the way in which they claim that bridge in England belongs solely to them, whereas in reality they are recent upstarts. Their comment about playing with 54 cards or 6 suits is rather wide of the mark as modern playing cards arrived from Egypt in the 14^th century by which time the deck already consisted of 52 cards and 4 suits. This certainly pre-dates the EBU.

Bridge followed on from whist, which had been the dominant trick-playing game for centuries.

Bridge was begun in the USA where it became popular in the 1890’s. In 1904 auction bridge was developed where the players bid a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer.

By 1930 Ely Culbertson, working with the best “Bridge Brains in the World”, had published his Blue Book. I have a copy of his 1936 “Gold Book” which he describes as the “most complete book on bridge ever published. On its cover it says; “Including the latest International Laws of Contract Bridge and the New Laws of Duplicate Contract”. As you see, nobody then needed the EBU to be able to play Bridge in England. The World Bridge Federation was formed in 1958 when Tony Pickering had already been playing the game for 15 years! Ask Tony what he thinks of the way in which the game has developed since he started!

We must stand up to the EBU, if they have their way everyone in the country will have to pay a fee to the EBU every time that they play, as I have shown, bridge was here and thriving before the EBU was ever formed.

Peter Augustus

Produced by ScoreBridge from www.scorebridge.com

Licensed to Christine Cooper

Thursday 21 June 07

A four table full Howell movement

Directed and scored by Chris Cooper

Pos	Players	Score %
1	Rita Lord & John Lord	58.33
2 =	Stuart Warne & Christine Cooper	54.17
2 =	Wendy Pattinson & Sue Osborne	54.17
4	Anne Carrington & Lucy Foster	53.57
5	John Day & Jean Soulier	50.00
6	Marjorie Davies & Paul Dorrington	47.62
7	Gus Nelson & Tony Pickering	42.26
8	Vera Iredale & Peter Iredale	39.88

Results produced on Friday 22 June 07 at 9:58 am

Produced by ScoreBridge from www.scorebridge.com

Licensed to Christine Cooper

Thursday 14 June 07

A four table full Howell movement

Directed and scored by Chris Cooper

Pos	Players	Score %
1	Stuart Warne & Christine Cooper	67.26
2	Peter Iredale & Vera Iredale	56.55
3 =	John Tomalin & Keith Langley	50.00
3 =	Anne Carrington & Lucy Foster	50.00
3 =	Marjorie Davies & Paul Dorrington	50.00
6	John Day & Jean Soulier	46.43
7	Anne Pettitt & Pam Southern	44.64
8	Gus Nelson & Tony Pickering	35.12

Results produced on Friday 15 June 07 at 9:34 am

Comment by Chris Cooper
Peter

Do you receive a copy of "English Bridge"? There is a question on page 33 regarding revokes and the EBU have written a reply. I have extracted the part which I think is relevant to your article and put it below for your information.

"Your club cannot opt out of this any more than you can play with 54 cards or six suits. If you don’t follow the laws of bridge you are not playing bridge, but some other game. Thus anything that is in the law book is compulsory, but items published by the EBU that are regulations rather than laws are not always compulsory. An example might be that your club could choose to allow only certain conventions and not follow level three, four or any other level, but they could not decide that the penalty for an established revoke was to stand on a chair and sing the Birdy song, or at least if they did it would be in addition to the tricks transferred."

My feeling is that all games have rules so that everyone is playing "on a level playing field". Whilst it would be easy to ask the opener what the bid meant, at the same time it paves the way for anyone to ask anything. In your case, the opposition (you) can reserve their rights so if they have been damaged at the end of the hand then the director can adjust the score in your favour - perhaps the other pair were damaged by not knowing what they were doing! If the director is involved in the dispute, then the director calls another director to adjust the score.

Hope this helps!

Regards

Chris

Produced by ScoreBridge from www.scorebridge.com

Licensed to Christine Cooper.

Thursday 7 June 07

A four table full Howell Movement with a sit out.

Directed and Scored by Chris Cooper.

Pos	Players	Score %
1	John Lord & Rita Lord	59.38
2	Keith Langley & Marjorie Davies	56.25
3	Peter Iredale & Vera Iredale	54.17
4	Anne Carrington & Lucy Foster	48.96
5	John Day & Jean Soulier	46.88
6	Stuart Warne & Christine Cooper	45.83
7	Gus Nelson & Tony Pickering	38.54

Results produced on Friday 08 June 07 at 9:02 am

Produced by ScoreBridge from www.scorebridge.com - Licensed to Christine Cooper

Thursday 31 May 07

Directed by Jean Soulier

Scored by Chris Cooper

Pos	Players	Score %
1	Ann Burrage & Pat Jarvis	59.72
2 =	Stuart Warne & Christine Cooper	56.94
2 =	Peter Crowhurst & Alison Crowhurst	56.94
4	Marjorie Davies & Paul Dorrington	53.47
5	Jean Soulier & Peter Augustus	49.31
6	Anne Carrington & Lucy Foster	46.53
7	Vera Iredale & Peter Iredale	45.83
8	John Tomalin & Keith Langley	44.44
9	Tony Pickering & Gus Nelson	36.81

Results produced on Friday 01 June 07 at 10:50 am

A Bidding Dilemma

I like playing bridge the way Rugby Bridge Club does it, that is why I am a member of the club. I am also on the Committee because I want to see the Club running its sessions in a way that brings maximum enjoyment to the maximum number of people. This means, however, that we do not follow the strict protocol of the EBU.

I am new to Club Bridge, Law Books and the EBU, but the way I see it, the EBU sets its Laws to police a highly competitive situation where players seek to gain financial benefit from scoring well. This requires strict Laws and a rigid interpretation. We don’t have financial benefit on a Thursday evening but we could get someone wishing to gain penalty points on a minor technicality that saw no advantage to the opposition (remember Jim on Tuesday evenings). It seems to me that the way we are playing we fall between two stools; we want a set of rules but we ignore the pre-requisites which the EBU system requires. The EBU system asks that we all produce convention cards (of course this also means that the partners should have actually read and understood what is written on the card!). If in doubt we could consult the convention card or ask the partner of the person making the bid. The dilemma arises because we do not use convention cards, so no searching of the rules will give us an answer!

What if that partner does not actually know what the bid meant?

This happened to me on Thursday. Dealer opened 2S: I asked dealer’s partner whether the bid was weak or strong, my subsequent bidding was going to depend on the strength of the 2S, she said she didn’t know, they didn’t play together very often and had not discussed the strength of their 2 bids.

My initial reaction was to simply ask dealer whether the bid was weak or strong but the view of others at the table was that this would be against EBU rules. However, if the question had gone ahead all four of us at the table would have gained equally and we could have just got on with playing the board. This may be considered “kitchen bridge” but to me it would be “sensible bridge” getting back to a friendly, hospitable style that many, or so I am told, remember from the “good old days”

Peter Augustus (views expressed are solely my own)

Anyone wishing to add to this dialog can e-mail their views to me, to be included on this blog.