It may (but probably not!) have come to your attention that the annual members meeting will be coming up shortly. This is a meeting which is held as part of the constitution and the board would encourage you to attend if at all possible. Details of how the meeting will be run appear at the end of this article.
This is a chance for all members of the YCBA, where their first county of allegiance (or registered as a second county) is Yorkshire, to question the board, assess how we are doing, put ideas forward that we may not have thought of and for the board to give an update of what we are doing to progress bridge in the county. The good news is that there will be a free session of about 18 boards, to be run on BBO, for all members who attend (provided of course they want to play) with a prize of free entry (pairs) to the Spring Congress in Harrogate in February 2024. So how can you fail to want to attend if only to put faces to names (if you haven’t inspected the website!) of members of the board.
If you are unable to attend but would like a question/query to be answered, please let the acting secretary (Robin Jepson) have your details at least one week before the meeting.
The meeting will be held on Zoom as we feel that this offers the best approach to try and get a broader spectrum of members from across our large geographical county and the details are as follows:
Should this link, for any reason fail to work, it will be on the website as well.
Let’s hope the weather is a bit better then and we hope to see you there.
David Guild/Nick Woolven (YCBA Co-chairs)
EBU Venetian Overseas Congress Winners
22nd October 2023
The winners of the overseas Congress Swiss Teams were
Stuart Davies Nichola Cockerill-Smith Lesley Bridson Catherine Thompson
All Yorkshire.
Yorkshire teams win 2023 NBL
15th October 2023
Yorkshire teams win 2023 NBL
The final round of matches in the 2023 season of the Northern Bridge League took place on 14th October, and Yorkshire have won the A division for the first time since the competition began in 2006. Yorkshire One also were the winners of the B division, with Yorkshire Two in fifth place. It was very nearly a clean sweep, as in the C division Yorkshire and Manchester finished level on points, with Manchester declared winners by a tiebreak.
A more detailed report of the final round of matches will be posted on the Inter-County page.
Great Northern Swiss Pairs 2023 Video Blog
4th October 2023
Steve Raine’s video blog (YouTube) for day 1 of the GNSP 2023 click here.
As we enter our Winter bridge season, we are seeing positive signs for our clubs’ future.
It’s been a slow climb out from the pandemic hiatus but our session levels are now close to pre-covid levels and moving forward. Nationally, 12 months to August 2023 volume is 4% up on the previous 12 months 2022. Our own county has a more substantial 12% growth, so well done our Yorkshire clubs! Partly our above county average growth is due to some of our clubs enthusiastically adopting online bridge to complement their in-club play.
We are now back to f2f competitive inter-club play. Our clubs’ Yorkshire League participation has improved to 56 club teams for this coming season starting end October. Thanks again to Mike Jackson and his team!
The only national laggard is congress play and I ask you to spread the word and participate in our two day Great Northern Swiss Pairs Congress running in Leeds from 30 September to 1st October. There is still time to enter. Click here.
Our Grants to Yorkshire Clubs project is progressing well with seven clubs submitting applications to date and still time for your club to apply.
The first two sessions of our own training of Yorkshire club TD’s are now complete with fifteen candidates enrolled.
We have been busy restructuring our Board to meet the challenge of future growth.
In my January Chair’s Blog we asked for help to fill our Board vacancy. We now have not one but two additional Board Members: Mark Dunkley from York BC and Ruth Kerr from Hull and Sheffield BC’s.
Also, we have re-structured to better manage our workloads. We have split the Chair responsibilities to two co-chairs, myself taking overall responsibility for competitive play and David Guild managing the bridge development initiatives.
It’s going to be an exciting next twelve months!
Best regards
Nick Woolven and David Guild
OLICANA BRIDGE CLUB DIAMOND JUBILEE 1963 to 2023
18th September 2023
Olicana Bridge Club in the centre of the delightful West Yorkshire town of Ilkley is celebrating its Diamond Jubilee in 2023. Every 60 days or so throughout the year we have celebrated a diamond day to enable as many as possible of our over 300 members to take part. Players enjoyed their bridge with a celebration cake and a fun mystery competition with prizes. These have been popular as was our special Sunday Social event on Sunday 30th July when around 40 members enjoyed the bridge accompanied by strawberries and cream, Prosecco and light snacks.
Olicana has a strong commitment to helping people tolearn bridge and to improve their game at all levels. We run a series of Saturday seminars for both intermediate and advanced players which are well attended.Our new series of bridge courses starting this autumn (both face to face and online) will have over 80 individuals participating to learn the wonderful game of bridge.
Each week Olicana runs six sessions in our club including weekly guided bridge events plus two online sessions (one on BBO and one on Real Bridge). Ilkley is a popular town and we offer a warm welcome to visiting pairs.
Could the students doing the Club Directors Course in York starting 9-Sep-2023, send me their email details. It is unlikely that Barrie Partridge will be well enough to take the first part of the course. The course will still go ahead but we need to know who will be attending. My email is jimedwards.bridge@gmail.com Thanks
