2006 - 2015
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NEWS AND GOSSIP: November 2006 to February 2007
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Club night, February 1st 2007
| Alaric presented the Mary Rogers Trophy to the winners, Andrea Sharp & Dennis Hicks . They celebrated by winning the Blue Section on presentation night! Click here for the full results for the Mary Rogers Trophy. |  |
Club night, January 11th 2007 - THE MARY ROGERS TROPHY
Firstly, congratulations to Andrea Sharp & Dennis Hicks for winning the trophy.Many players spotted an obvious problem with some of the hands played, in that rather amazingly, the hands on boards 3, 4 and 5 were remarkably similar to each other. "To err is only human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer". I used a new piece of software to generate the hands, which was tested thoroughly before use. The hands were computer-generated and manually dealt for me, and I believe that the problem was due to an 'operator error' with the use of the software. Clearly, on boards 4 and 5, rather than do a completely new random deal, it just did a minor shuffle. Obviously, I could not Quality Assure the hands until I encountered them at the table, by when it was rather late to do anything about the problem...
Profuse apologies, and I do hope that it did not spoil your enjoyment of the evening. Obviously, steps will be taken to ensure that there is no recurrence if / when this software is used again. By and large the software did a good job, and I suspect that you would agree that the hands 1 - 3 and 6 - 24, not to mention the unused 25 - 32, were an interesting set. The software's ability to print curtain cards is also a huge asset when faced with the need to duplicate boards over two sections. It's a vastly cheaper way of generating the hands than using a Duplimate machine, albeit more labour intensive.
Rather amazingly, if you were to study the three pairs of travellers, it wouldn't be obvious that the three hands were so similar...More problems with the Mary Rogers Trophy results...
PROFUSE APOLOGIES: When scoring the results for the Mary Rogers Trophy held on January 11th, there was a small but very significant error with my entry of the results onto the computer for one board in the Blue Section. One tabled failed to arrow switch the board (Board 4) - and I failed to spot that had happened, and as a result about half the pairs in the blue section had incorrect scores entered onto the computer. Dorothy and I have since double-checked all the scores against the travellers, and another error in the Red Section came to light - I had typed in an indistinct 230 as 200.I have clearly laid out rules to cover situations like this:
- If the error is caused by an incorrect entry on the traveller - then the result stands as recorded, unless corrected before I leave the hall on Thursday evening
- If the error is caused by my mistyping, then I correct it.
Accordingly, the scores have all been corrected as appropriate. I am really sorry about this - my enthusiasm to get the results up on the website early on Friday morning obviously cost in terms of accuracy of typing. The updated results also changed the overall rankings, most significantly affecting the top three places, including the overall winners. Profuse apologies, especially to the displaced "winners".
Essex Swiss Pairs, January 7th 2007
There was success for several Mountnessing-based pairs at this event. It was won by Chris Megahey and his partner. Tessa Beer and Peter Oake came equal second, and Dennis Valtisiaris and Po Shing Lee (holders) were equal 4th.Simultaneous Pairs event, January 25th 2007 - help to build a school!
The World Bridge Federation in association with ECats Bridge, is organizing this Simultaneous Pairs to raise money to build a school in Pakistan, to be called the WBF School. It is to be built in the area devastated by the earthquake.Zia Mahmood is going to be overseeing the distribution of funds in Pakistan, to ensure that they are used specifically to build the school.Club night, 4th January 2007 - BLUE SECTION
The results for the Blue section on January 4th are now confirmed - no changes were made. However, some lessons were learned from the experience, as detailed below.The movement that I deploy whenever there are 10.5 or 11 tables in a section is the '11-table Hesitating Mitchell'. This movement avoids the need for 'revenge' rounds, and if there is a sit-out it will only be for two boards. In this movement, the moves are as for a standard Mitchell Movement at tables 1-10, but East / West pairs play TWICE at table 11, and there is a board-relay between tables 5 and 6. The initialNS pair at table 11 will return to the table as EW on the last round, but all other pairs visiting this table 'swivel' - playing first as East / West at 11, then North / South at 11, and then they move to be East / West at table 1 and continue as for a normal Mitchell movement. I always use Table Cards when this movement is deployed.
The moral of this story is that if you have been provided with a Table Card, please do check that you have the right opponents and the right boards each round. Watch out also towards the end of the evening for ' Arrow Switches', which are highlighted on the Table Cards in RED FONT and by 'arrow' signs.Presentation of the Windmill Trophy 2006
| Alaric was delighted to present the trophy to Ann & Irene on November 30th. Anne and Irene celebrated their success further by finishing as joint winners North / South in the Blue Section on the night! |  |
Windmill Trophy, November 9th 2006
Many congratulations to Ann Morgan & Irene Elton who won the Windmill Trophy on November 9th. See the full results . The hands played and a commentary on them are available through this link.I would like to express my special thanks to my wife Dorothy - and I suspect those who played last night will wish to do so too. She painstakingly manually dealt a complete set of 32 boards (just in case!), then duplicated them, then annotated them, all whilst I was banished, i.e., out playing in a Gold Cup match. If you think it must be an interesting experience to have 15 'Director Calls' in one evening, try preparing the boards for such an event!
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