Page 5 - ABF Newsletter December 2024

As 2024 comes to a close I am feeling positive about the future of bridge here in Australia.
Summer is always a great season in our lives as bridge players. Not only do we get to enjoy the festive season and new year with our families and friends, we get to attend parties at our local bridge clubs and we get the opportunity to participate in two of our premier events!
The Summer Festival of Bridge is one of the stalwarts on the Australian Bridge calendar. Over the years it has grown and shrunk and now it is back in growth mode. Laura Ginnan is our Tournament Organiser this year and Laura has put together a great program that not only includes the regular topflight events, there are several opportunities for newer players to share in the experience playing against other newer players. If you haven’t played the Summer Festival before I encourage you to give it a try in 2025. Oh and by the way, this event is held at Canberra Rex Hotel and if you like the idea of immersing yourself in the event they are offering some great rates for their quality rooms. But you should get in quick and book as they are in high demand. You will find all the details on the My ABF website
https://www.myabf.com.au/ events/congress/view/1785
including a link to get the bridge player rates for your accommodation at The Rex!
The Gold Coast Congress (GCC) is typically held to- wards the end of summer but in 2025 it starts on 1 February. It moved to the earlier time because that was the only slot the Queensland Bridge Association (QBA) was offered by the Convention Centre. Most of you will have heard that the 2025 GCC will be the last one! That’s because the Convention Centre is not offering the QBA any dates for 2026, so the 63rd congress marks the end of an era. The ABF will be working closely with the QBA to create a new na- tional event in Queensland but unfortunately that won’t be until 2027.
So, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to find a partner and teammates and join the fun, helping us
celebrate the passing of what has been considered Australia’s best event. Head to the My ABF website
https://www.myabf.com.au/ events/congress/view/1445#program
for more details and if you can’t find a partner or teammates then the GCC team will gladly help.
A good friend of mine recently sent me a link to an article on bridgewinners.com. If you are not familiar with this website, I encourage you to take a look. There’s lots of content on their written by bridge players. Sometimes they share hands, other times they talk about things that are going on in the bridge world. This particular article was titled Spirit of the Game and the author spoke about a situation where his partner had to leave a tournament unexpectedly and that his fiancée, who had only been playing for a year and hadn’t progressed beyond supervised play, had to step in. They were bidding a hand and the author bid 4NT asking for aces. His fiancée started to ask whether she was allowed to ask what the bid meant so he quickly jumped in and said no. But what happened next was that one of their opponents turned to his fiancée and said, “you’ve been playing for a year, you can ask whatever you’d like”. How nice was that opponent! I think we could all take a leaf out of her book and then Australia would be an even more enjoyable place to play bridge!
Before signing off I would like to congratulate the MARKEY team of Phil Markey, Joe Haffer, Sophie Ashton and Dave Wiltshire on winning the Open Teams Playoff recently. They have earned the right to represent us all at next year’s World Championships in Denmark. By the time the next newsletter comes out all four of our teams will have been determined and I will provide more details then.
As 2024 ends and 2025 is just around the corner, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season. Howev- er you celebrate at this time of year, I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you at a bridge event in the future. In the meantime, as always, I welcome your thoughts on how the ABF can work to improve bridge, at all levels, throughout the country. My email address is at the top of the page!
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: December 2024
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