sitemaster's blog

The first major event took place at Thames over the second weekend of January. Although table numbers were down on last year due to the attractions of the Canberra Festival of Bridge it was still a respectable turnout. Canberra had slipped back in the calendar to clash with our Thames event. Richard Solomon was one such attendee and has done a great job of covering the whole event on the NZ Bridge site - you can read about it by clicking here.

An innovative tournament format was played at the Huntly Christmas Party; the last event on the Waikato-Bays calendar for the year. The field was split into three groups according to perceived stage of advancement. The highest rank group played a 7-table Howell in the morning while the other two groups faced off in a 13-table Mitchell. After lunch the highest ranked group was unleashed to savage the middle group in the Mitchell while the others played amongst themselves in the Howell.

CDM Karen Marteletti has posted three video taken at the InterProvincials played at Wellington last weekend. You can watch them sequentially starting with this first one of our victorious Intermediate team scoring up after their VuGraph match or individually: Richard Solomon's interview of Karen, and then his interview of Brian Gallaher.

Wearing her Bridge-It Jane hat (not NZB Board member hat) Jane Stearns is encouraging all clubs to give their members this introduction to the Nesting Pairs course:

The Babich NZ-Wide pairs is to be held at various centres around the country on Friday 3rd of November. To date the only Waikato clubs that appear to have registered are Cambridge, Hamilton, Huntly, Morrinsville, Taupo, Thames, and Tokoroa. This is a fun evening with everyone playing the same cards at the same time. Last year it attracted over 1000 pairs. Some clubs arrange to gather for a meal of pizza, curry, or the like and a glass of the sponsor's product beforehand. This year the event is going international with one section playing a couple of hours after they fly to Rarotonga on a bridge holiday. Register at the host club.