2011 Blog #7 dated 30 July

I wish to take this opportunity of wishing all our Muslim
bridge players and friends Ramadan Mubarak!

It is hard to believe how the year is whizzing by and we are now in the second half of the year!

Gauteng Bridge Union hosted a highly successful tournament in Sun City. This is its second year and we all hope that it grows from strength to strength. We must congratulate Joe Zindel , who was the driving force behind this venture and successfully negotiated sponsorship of R100,000 from Sun City and also put our bridge name on the map for future large prize money tournaments.

We are waiting with anticipation as to the venue for our congress next year. It will be held in Cape Town under the auspices of the Western Cape Union. The dates presently on the table are: Friday the 27th April 2012 till Friday the 6th May. These dates will incorporate two public holidays which will mean only four days off work for those that need to take leave.

It was agreed at our A.G.M that we would allocate a weekend for the Interprovincial, Medwin and Berkowitz as a stand-alone tournament. This is on the cards for next year and dates have to be allocated.

I’m also pleased to say that we have had our first meeting with a Constitution lawyer and have our first draft which obviously needs a lot of work and it has been sent to all the unions for their very valued comments. These comments must be sent to either Mark Oliff or myself before the 15th August and then its back to the lawyer for a re-work. We have set a deadline to have our new constitution ready for ratification at our bi-annual A.G.M which is to be held in Southern Cape at Brenton Community Hall (Knysna) in November.

The entry form for Interclub is on the sabf-website as well as accommodation details, so please get your entries into Roz as soon as possible. The sooner we know how many teams we are catering to, the sooner we can advise times of play, so please don’t wait until the deadline to enter!

We look forward to seeing all the clubs from Western and Eastern Cape, Border and naturally Southern Cape. Our aim is to try and move all our national tournaments around the country to enable players in all our provinces to be part of our bridge family.

Wishing you all good bridge.

Helen

#6 - 6 July 2011

I have just caught my breath from our trip to Tunisia.

As I am the secretary of the African Bridge Federation, I was sponsored by the ABF to attend the zonals and needless to say help with the running of the tournament and attend the various meetings.

It was a fabulous venue and a great tournament. Our Open team certainly did us proud by taking first place and the gold medal and will be representing Africa Zone 8 together with Egypt.

Our teams always stood out in their uniform of black or white T-shirts with the South African Flag and we were all welcomed with open arms by the other teams. Of course, all the other teams mostly spoke French and this made things a little awkward, but we all managed to make ourselves understood.

At the opening ceremony our president, Bernard Pascal, addressed the players in French and Arabic, but at the same time had a powerpoint presentation running in English which was so very well done and we didn’t feel in the least bit left out.

Both Reunion and Egypt put in a bid for the 2013 zonals and it was decided that Reunion should have a chance to host the event. By the way, I was horrified to see that the budget was for €39,000, which as you know equates to almost R400,000. That certainly put paid to any thoughts of South Africa hosting such an event unless we had a very generous sponsor.

I must thank Sid for the superb coverage of the event. Results were out almost immediately as well as bulletins were available for all to read to keep in touch with our players.

Finally... what is the World Championships all about? Read it here.