Beckenham Bridge Club was founded in January 1950 as a good way to pass long cold winter nights playing bridge. In its early years it was a home for luminaries of the bridge world back in the day and for some years stabled players playing at international level. No Club stands still and in our case there was only one way to go and decline set in with gradually falling numbers of members and standards of play. Still a good standard but not as good as …. Things are now on an upswing as we grow in size again and our playing standard is sure to follow. A recent evening session comprised 16 longstanding members, 10 from our last beginners/improvers group, 8 new members and 2 visitors. Thanks to the incredible dedication of our members we run a very popular beginners through to improvers teaching group. There are many people out there that we have taught to play bridge over the last 15 years or more. Some like me stayed with the club but more did not. Although we have been able to enthuse people about playing bridge as a game of cards, converting those card players into regular club members is more of a challenge.
January 2025 was our 75th birthday but long cold winter nights were considered ill suited to playing bridge and having a party. Like many other clubs we have elderly members who do not like being out on dark nights. So we selected the longest day of the year for our Anniversary Tournament and Reception - 21st June 2025. Little did we know it would also be one of the hottest days of the year! We threw our doors open and invited many former members and anyone else who fancied it to play in our Anniversary Tournament aiming to fill 20 tables for 40 boards prizes and a party.
What a day it proved to be. We secured an excellent venue at Azelia Hall in Beckenham and some excellent support from our Club members who volunteered to do everything from baking cakes to setting up tables and catering to taking everything down and cleaning up afterwards – as well as playing some bridge between times. We had 19 tables of lovely people some taking up old acquaintances and some making new acquaintances. Plenty of good humour and folks chatting fondly about the good (and not so good) old days. Anecdotes and reminiscences were rife. My favourite? Probably the player who laid his hand down as dummy saying ‘Sorry partner I don’t have much for you here’ only to discover he was declarer and, despite showing opps the best part of the 26 cards he had to play with after the real dummy went down, the contract was made!
Our bridge was played in two sessions with N/S winners and E/W winners – better to spread the prizes around we thought. To try and have all the E/W pairs play all the N/S pairs we ran 2 sections in each session and the E/W pairs swapped sections for the 2nd session. Our thanks to the unfortunate pair who played the same N/S pairs twice – 10 into 9 does not go. The second session followed a break for tea, sandwiches and cakes baked by our members. What a great selection we had! Revived and refreshed we played on until just after 7.00pm and then the party started. More sandwiches, savouries and cake washed down with bubbly, wine, beers, jugs of sangria and soft drinks. Plenty stayed to swap tales of the day and days gone by.
Winners were announced and prizes were handed out. Just to be sure everyone knew who they were the 1st, 2nd and 3rd N/S and E/W pairs were invited onto the stage to receive their prizes. Sadly our handicap prize winners missed out on the adulation and acclaim of their moment on the stage on account of a handicap in working out the handicaps. Maybe they were relieved to be spared the blushes of public adulation, I know not. For the record the winners were:
N/S Position E/W
Ian Draper & Gwyneth Davies (picture) 1st Joan Chandler & Don Mitchell (picture)
Roger & Lesley Pechey 2nd Bob & Mary Kendall
John Hunt & Tom Smith 3rd Matthew Brown & Luke Kerr
David Keall & Subhash Handa Handicap winner Christine Wolfe & Juliet Adelman
Chris Lamb & David Martin-Sperry 9 High handicap winner Peter & Jilla Wright
We then moved on to the cutting of the anniversary cake baked and decorated by our secretary (Loraine Slee). The cake was cut by Pat McBain and Colin Game who we reckon may have been members for about 50 years – each. We were also able to wish a happy birthday to the four members of our club who also had a birthday on 21st June!
For a bit of extra fun we threw in a couple of spot prizes of a bottle of wine if someone made a redoubled contract, or won the 13th trick with the two of clubs or ace of spades. I thought I would be taking those bottles home with me but instead they went home with Rodney Meredith and Pat McBain. Pat is now our specialist player of trick 13, having won one with both a 2 of clubs and on a later board with an ace of spades.
Can’t say enough ‘thank you’s to all our club members who pitched in to set the day up and make it run smoothly and successfully. It turned out to be a very enjoyable day with plenty of positive feedback about the day and our club. Everyone went away happy from the day if not all entirely happy with how they played.
Would we do it again? The happy smiling faces of so many people made it all worthwhile and the opportunity to meet old friends and make new friends was well received. We all had a day to remember so what more is there to say.
We also give our thanks to our director for the day John Oakland who kept all in order including the players in somewhat trying conditions with the heat of the day. We are also indebted to our County Association (Kent Contract Bridge Association) for their support and loan of equipment to allow us to score so many tables electronically and extended board sets to play so many boards.
Could we have done anything better? With hindsight we should have settled on a movement and recruited enough players for it well before the day rather than trying to cut and trim to the number of players on the day. As it happens 20 full tables would have been better than 19 tables for what we wanted to do. In furthering the boundaries of bridge scoring we uncovered a wrinkle in EBUScore which meant we had to compile our final results and handicaps manually from the 2 session results produced by EBUScore.
Charles Scott
Chair, Beckenham Bridge Club