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Status Reports
Status: Bridge (2026 - September)
(Text as at 15/10/2026 21:53:17)
Rationale for this Project
- I showed some natural talent for bridge in my youth1, and I’ve wanted to see how far I can get with a bit of application (but – given the breadth my other interests – without fanaticism).
- However, this project has always needed to be kept rigorously in hand, something that has rarely been the case since I returned to the game.
- Basically, Bridge is fun and I do reasonably well, but not well enough2 to justify making it a major focus of my efforts.
- I’ve been back playing again since December 2007, with numerous intermissions3.
- I’ve now decided I’m much more suited to Bridge than Chess, so – while I would like to take Chess more seriously than hitherto and try to learn something about the game – this means that this project is fairly safe from predations from my Chess project4.
- As of September 2021, following the Covid lockdowns, two local Clubs which I used to attend regularly – Billericay Mayflower Bridge Club and Mountnessing5 – re-opened. Unfortunately, while the former is – while not exactly thriving – still comfortably holding its head above water, the latter has sadly died.
- In default of other enthusiastic volunteers, I have taken on various roles on the Committee for Mayflower: I’m Chairman, Secretary, Team Captain, Webmaster and an accounts signatory; I can also run the scoring system, though prefer only as a backup.
- From 25Q4 onwards, I’ve decided to play F2F once a week with David P at Mayflower, and – very occasionally – with Colin or Albert when David’s not around.
- I now also play on-line once or twice a week using RealBridge at a few strong clubs: Leighton Buzzard, Milton Keynes and Cumbria. Usually with Dave T. As a way of sizing up the opposition, I’ve created this page: Milton Keynes Bridge Club - NGS Ratings. Unfortunately, it takes 15 minutes a day collecting the data, and I wonder whether it’s worth it. A spin-off is that the routines alert me who – in Essex, Herts & Bedford – has played the previous day (if they don’t hide their NGS rating) and how they did.
- Otherwise, I’ll play in the occasional social event and in suitable EBU or ECBA events, with either David P or Dave T.
- See my Bridge Page6 for further information on my Bridge activities.
General Status
- Statistics: by partner and club-category can be obtained by following these links – for the last quarter and to date.
- Results: Follow this link. Further information can be found from my Bridge Page7.
- Master Points:
- 47,5338, bagged to date, including 1,617 Blue Points and 132.44 Green Points.
- That makes me a Premier National Master. My next milestone9 will be to achieve Life Master status (60,000 LPs, including 150 GPs [including 1/3 of the Blue Points]) – so quite a long way to go! Achievable as far as GPs are concerned, but I’m not sure where all those LPs will come from.
- EBU Grading:
- 26Q3 was an improvement on last quarter. A few excellent results took me to Ace of Clubs, and again later after a dip back to a King, but another couple of disasters towards the end of the month took me back down to a high King. .
- See EBU: NGS for full details of the scheme, and previous Status Reports and my Summary of Progress to Date10 for my detailed meanderings over time.
- Summary of Progress to Date: I’ve hived off the history to the above-mentioned Summary of Progress to Date11 document, which I now intend to update annually unless there’s an exciting development.
- Further Details: of time expenditure against task are given below, extracted from the relevant version of my Summary Task List12 (which is regularly updated between Quarterly Status Reports) and YTD here13.
Summary of Progress during July - September 2026
- I spent 282 hours in 26Q3 on this Project, or related work (1224.25 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2025). That's 98.3% of the planned effort (104.4% YTD). Overall, 39.6% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 40% YTD) - as against 36.1% planned (35.6% YTD).
- I had maintained my reduced time allocation at 22 hours / week, and – thankfully – underspent it by around 2%, though I was still 4% overspent YTD.
- I played F2F exclusively with David P – once a week at Mayflower.
- I now prefer RealBridge to F2F as you get to meet more people and – for tournaments – it saves excessive travelling and accommodation costs.
- Consequently, I’ve continued my renewed partnership with Dave Turner, with whom I’d played at Cambridge in the early 1970s and on and off in 2011-13. He lives in Darlington up North, so RealBridge is a blessing. We play weekly on Wednesdays online at Milton Keynes and occasionally on other days.
- There was one bridge lunch in the Quarter.
- I attended a meeting of the Mountnessing Village Hall Committee – where the Bridge Club meets – and have now been installed as a Trustee. The Secretary has now retired and there’s no confirmed replacement. I keep wondering whether I should volunteer, but have not mentioned it yet.
- I’ve added Tim and Steve to the Mayflower team and entered the squad to the NICKO and Crockfords.
- Dave T and I also formed an on-line team with the Mollisons, a pair of local Grand Masters.
- Also played 3 times on RealBridge with Colin.
- I continue to play "Bridge - Handle" daily. Very enjoyable – and educational.
- Highlights of the Quarter were:-
- EBU One Day GP Swiss Teams (Sunday 30th August 2026; RealBridge): With Dave T & the Mollisons. Won 3, Lost 3 matches. 9 / 17. Had been leading at half time. Approx +5 NGS (average opponents’ NGS was 62). 0.84 GPs earned.
- EBU One Day GP Swiss Pairs (Saturday 11th July 2026; RealBridge): With Colin. Fair, but disappointing. Won 3, lost 4 matches. Came 20 / 46. Slight positive on the NGS. 0.75 GPs gained.
- Otherwise, see Results last quarter by Partner & Club.
- Looking back, I probably still spend too much time enjoying myself reviewing the sessions after the event, important though this is. I no longer engage in protracted – and usually fruitless – email exchanges, however.
- Further details follow:-
Bridge (Total Hours = 282)
- Bridge - Reading / Writing
- Bridge - Admin (Total Hours = 91.5)
- 26Q2 Status Reports: Bridge (1.5 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Admin" (1.5 hours)
- Admin - Bridge - Mountnessing Village Hall (MVH) Trusteeship (5.75 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Mountnessing Village Hall Trusteeship" (5.75 hours)
- Admin - Crockfords Entry (1.25 hours)
- Admin - Cumbria Entries (0.25 hours)
- Admin - Mayflower DBC - Lunch with DP, AK, JMcC & TC (4 hours)
- Admin - Mayflower DBC - NICKO Entry (2 hours)
- "Admin - Mayflower DBC - Secretarial & Signatory Duties" (39.75 hours)
- Bridge - Discussions with Chris (0.5 hours)
- Bridge - Emails / Calls to Colin (1 hour)
- Bridge - Emails / Calls to David P (0.25 hours)
- Bridge - Emails to / Discussions with Dave T (1.75 hours)
- Bridge - MK Payments (0.75 hours)
- Bridge - Planning EBU & ECBA Sessions for 2026 (2.25 hours)
- Bridge - Planning EBU Sessions with Dave T (3.75 hours)
- Bridge Database - Maintain Essex, Herts & Beds, etc NGS Capture for MK (25.25 hours)
- Bridge Database - Manual MK NGS Capture (1.5 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Admin" (44.5 hours)
- Bridge - Play (Total Hours = 103)
- Bridge - Cumbria - RealBridge (Dave T) (9.75 hours)
- Bridge - EBU OODGP Swiss Pairs - RealBridge (Colin) (6 hours)
- Bridge - EBU OODGP Swiss Teams - RealBridge (Dave T + Mollisons) (6 hours)
- Bridge - Leighton Buzzard - RealBridge (Dave T) (2.5 hours)
- Bridge - Mayflower (David P) (38.5 hours)
- Bridge - Milton Keynes - RealBridge (Colin) (5.75 hours)
- Bridge - Milton Keynes - RealBridge (Dave T) (34.5 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Playing" (103 hours)
- Bridge - Study (Total Hours = 83.25)
- "Bridge - Handle" (26 hours)
- Bridge - Session Reviews - Colin (4.5 hours)
- Bridge - Session Reviews - Dave T (18.5 hours)
- Bridge - Session Reviews - David P (16.75 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - Colin (2 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - Dave T (10 hours)
- Bridge - Systems Review - David P (5.5 hours)
→ See "Admin - Bridge - Study" (57.25 hours)
Plans for the Near Future:
- I think my bridge activities have peaked, so I’ve reduced my time allocation to 20 hours / week for the coming Quarter. We’ll see how this goes: I hope and expect it’s adequate.
- Detail:-
- Play:-
→ Mayflower: Weekly on Tuesdays, with David P.
→ Milton Keynes - RealBridge - Wednesdays with Dave T.
→ Cumbria - RealBridge - most Sundays with Dave T.
→ EBU On-line One Day Pairs / Teams GP events - monthly with Dave T
→ NICKO 1st Round, with David P.
→ Crockfords 1st Round, with David P.
- Play "Bridge - Handle" daily.
- Directors' Training - Read (or re-read):-
→ "World Bridge Federation - The Laws of Duplicate Bridge 2017"
→ "EBU - Club Director Training - Days 1 & 2 course books & Assessment"
→ "EBU - Blue Book: EBU Player Handbook: Revised 2024"
→ "EBU - 2024 White Book: Technical Matters"
→ "EBU - Various Papers on Duplicate Bridge Movements"
- Bridge Admin:
→ Chairman, Secretarial, Scoring and Website duties for Mayflower Bridge Club.
→ Mountnessing Village Hall Trustee - familiarisation and general duties.
→ Maintain website for Hutton Union.
→ Maintain my Bridge Page14.
- Study: Re-read Hand-counting papers, focussing on
→ Papers on Counting the Hands15,
→ "Bourke (Tim) & Smith (Marc), Bird (David) - Countdown to Winning Bridge"
→ "Lawrence (Mike) - How to read your opponents' cards: The bridge expert's way to locate missing high cards", and
→ "Lawrence (Mike) - How to Play Card Combinations"
- Read "Kelsey (Hugh) & Glauert (Michael) - Bridge Odds for Practical Players".
- "Reading - Bridge - Magazines".
In-Page Footnotes:
Footnote 2:
- My view is that anyone sufficiently smart to play bridge at the expert level is probably sufficiently smart to do something more useful with their time, so ought not to be playing, except in retirement.
- That said, anyone would like to play like an expert should this be possible while still keeping bridge as a relaxation. I doubt this is possible, certainly in my own case.
Footnote 3:
- I withdrew from the game for most of 2015 but returned in the final quarter. This absence allowed me to get things in perspective for a while thereafter – playing twice or three times a week, with the occasional tournament.
- When not playing, I didn’t miss the game at all, but maybe this was mainly because acting as the Essex County Bridge Association (ECBA) Webmaster provided a psychological substitute.
- I again retired from the game for 18 months, commencing in July 2017. I didn’t miss the game during this period either and I no longer did any Webmastering.
- I then played 2 games in 18Q4 and 6 games in 19Q1.Thereafter, things returned pretty much to normal until the Covid-19 pandemic, when all bridge in clubs and tournaments was shut down from the outbreak and lock-down of mid-March 2020, until full re-opening started in September 2021.
- While there were lots of opportunities for on-line bridge, and several local clubs ran their own sessions, I decided not to take part as it’s too much like a busman’s holiday (given I spend all day in front of a computer). The systems on offer were BBO - Bridge Base On-Line and RealBridge, which has the advantage of having video and audio links, with links to the EBU’s NGS and MP systems. While the development of RealBridge undercuts some of my objections to on-line bridge, in that there is inter-personal contact, it still has the drawback of being stuck in front of a computer screen. As in other “intermissions”, I don’t miss the game in the least – this time because I was happily focusing on my philosophical researches.
- I intermitted for two months in 22Q2, partly to focus on my philosophical researches.
- I intermitted again from end-July 2023 until the end of the year, again to focus on my research.
Footnote 5: Footnote 8:
- There’s a slight discrepancy between my records and the EBU stats.
- When the EBU had 33,776, my calculations had 33,915, made up of 22,962 LPs, 1,175 BPs and 100.06 GPs.
- I’ve not been bothered to determine the reason for the discrepancy, nor repeated the comparison as now I’m playing regularly timing issues also play a part. However, I have written a reconciliation program but haven’t sorted out the discrepancies yet.
- I think I had about 5,000 LPs from my student days, but never registered any, more’s the pity.
- My Gold Points have now “aged off”.
Footnote 9:
- I no longer aim to climb the greasy pole, but simply to enjoy the game.
- As I’m now playing regularly – if infrequently – in GP events, I can consider advancing my ranking, though this is fairly meaningless and not worth worrying about.
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Text Colour Conventions
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026