By JA Scudder

The 2001 Summer Festival ran smoothly from the customers’ point of view. The event was not helped by the Canberra weather with three extremely hot days in a row. There is room for improvement in 2002.

The outstanding success of the event was the 22 seater bus driven by Christian Deschamps. His cheery attitude and willingness to provide service brought many positive comments. I am still receiving written thanks for this service.

I would like to single out the two Festival Secretaries, Frances Adams and Jo Waters, as providing an excellent service to the customers. They received positive comments from the customers during the trying times.

During the 2001 Festival, a subscribers’ list of e-mail addresses was commenced. This will allow people to receive information about the 2002 Summer Festival, including the Brochure, by e-mail as soon as it goes to the printer. At present the list contains about 60 subscribers, and these people received results of the 2001 NOT as soon as they became available. It is intended to publicise the existence of the subscribers’ list in both Australian Bridge and the ABF Newsletter later in the year. This should lead to a decrease in the cost of distribution of the Brochure for 2002.

The accepting of entries by credit card proved more popular this year with 57% of revenue arriving in this manner. It makes it easier for people to enter and thus entries were made earlier than in the past. This allows the organisation to be better prepared.

The number of tables competing in each event was

Event	2001 Field	2000 Field	1999 Field	1998 Field	1997 Field
NWT Swiss	80	71	86	92	98
Bridge Buffs	0	8	3
0-149ers	27	41	38	36	38
Seniors	74	73	62	54	44
Mens Pairs	14	19	17	17	20
Mixed Pairs	47	42	33	5	11
Flighted Pairs	24	34	30	28	29
AOP	34	36	52	81	86
Swiss Pairs	139	120	117	98	88
SWPT	282	258	281	267	292
Mixed Teams	59	53	63	64	56

With the increasing number of teams in the Seniors, it has been decided to have a Stage II, identical in format to the Womens, with six teams qualifying for the Saturday and a final on the Sunday.

The Bridge Buffs event was cancelled as there were two full entries plus one pair on the Sunday after entries closed.

The table count rose from 6,400 in 2000 to 6,900 which was comparable to 1999. This was undoubtedly a result of the excellent entry, both in quality as well as quantity, in the South West Pacific Teams Championship. The attendance of the two European teams seemed to attract the strongest line-ups from the Australian players. The seeding committee was able to find 64 teams capable of being seeded, i.e. teams with the potential to make the last 16.

The Swiss Pairs event continued to grow unchecked. There needs to be a method of splitting the field into two in 2002. The Festival's Tournament Committee will look at varying proposals such as a Restricted event with an upper limit of, say, 1,000 on the sum of the two players masterpoints (no international players allowed) or a Masters section involving only those players seeded in the SW Pacific Teams or the first 100 tables entering.

The Canberra Bridge Club took on the duty of finding substitutes this year and kept up the longstanding tradition of an excellent service. There was always a spare team for each event as it started (three teams on the first day). Teams were needed for the entire 0-149ers event and for three days of the SWPT as one team withdrew due to ill-health. They also provided the normal substitutes for ill-health etc.

The total entry fees rose by about 4% (excluding GST). The entry fees collected equate to $10.00 per player per table session.

There was a huge majority in favour of changing the session times to no evening play amongst the players who responded (around two hundred). This matter will be considered by the Festival's Tournament Committee and a separate report made. It does reflect the aging face of bridge and the fact that there is a definite trend in Sydney for there to be no evening sessions at Congresses.

The bulletin edited by Earl Dudley was up to the standard of previous years. The contributions from players also helped in making this success. The new production team of Sue Kelso & Michael Wilkinson worked tirelessly into the small hours of the night. Unfortunately they have indicated that they will not be returning. The whole concept of the bulletin needs an overhaul as the demands placed on its staff are too high. Perhaps a feature reporter is needed to report on the leading match of the day.

The air-conditioning in the Canberra Room and the new Centenary Ballroom at the Hyatt proved to be inadequate. Having said that, Rydges also struggled with the heat and the small rooms at Rydges had next to no air-conditioning throughout the event.

The Vu-Graph was organised by the Canberra Bridge Club. The equipment provided by Rydges was excellent and was easily viewed from anywhere in the audience. Despite there having been several trial runs at various ACTBA events, there were technical problems with the entry of scores during the first half and some deficiencies in the software reared their ugly head. Hopefully the production will be improved by the time the ANC gets to Canberra. Given the poor attendance of winners at the prize-giving and the expense of the entire Friday night production, serious thought has to be given to whether these two functions should continue.

Bridge Buffs continued to provide the partnership matching service. This was appreciated by the players who were organised into pairing of comparable skill. Indeed overseas pairs were able to make use of this service and were most pleased with the outcome. I recommend that other ABF events take advantage of this service by contacting Prue Lawford.

I am pleased to report that there were very few errors in the dealing, far less than the limits imposed by the contract. For 2002 I am being asked to consider using plastic boards for all pairs events as the problems with hands that did arise were due to players putting the empty wallet back on the table in the wrong direction. This would be a sizeable capital investment.

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