SCOTTISH BRIDGE UNION
Congratulations to Derek Sanders and Stephen Peterkin who won the Congress Pairs final and were also part of the team who won the Congress Teams final. Their team mates were John Matheson and Iain Sime.
One of the highlights of the weekend was the Masterclass with John Matheson and Charles Outred. Both are international players who have won many cups at Peebles over the years; so they made it all sound easy as they talked us through how we should have bid and played the previous nights’ hands.
There was a scary moment for us during the Masterclass when Julie looked down to see that she was holding the printout of the next day’s hands. Oh no! Did that mean that she had accidently distributed 50 copies of the wrong thing? Fortunately that didn’t turn out to be the case; but it did mean that she was teased all weekend by people who wanted her to give them printouts for boards we hadn’t played yet!
Our Bronze section was smaller than we expected due to ill health; but it was a very happy and friendly group. We think all the Bronze players enjoyed the challenge of playing all day in the main section Swiss events.
The Bronze players had their own Masterclass with Tim McKay and Sandy Duncan who talked us through how they had bid and played the previous evenings hands. Andrew Barnes our scorer had printed off a list of frequencies so that we could all see how often certain contracts had been bid throughout the field (all sections had played the same hands) and we had excellent feedback about how useful the Bronze players had found it.
It was lovely to be in Peebles at this time of year to see the mists rolling away from the hilltops to reveal the changing colours of the trees, but there wasn’t much time to be outside what with the Masterclasses and the Sunday two board knockout (which raised £65 for the Beatson Cancer Charity).
Thank you to everyone who came; we are looking forward to seeing you again in December.
Hasan and Julie Choudhury