2019 High Scores

People liked this last year, so we thought we'd take another end-of-year look through the statistical highs (and lows) of the year's bridge.

As with 2018, there was only one pair to manage a 90%+ card this year - Natasha Romaine and Phil Thompson, playing at Belper Bridge Club on 25th January. They couldn't quite top last year's score of 92.50%, but they won't have been too disappointed with 90.18%.

Natasha and Phil only played 16 boards, which makes it a little bit easier to score big. The pair with the highest score who played 20+ boards was Tony Cherrett and Phil Harris at Caterham Bridge Club on 30th August with a score of 86.25%.

In all, 21 pairs managed to score 80%+ over 20+ boards, so if you were one of the pairs that managed this - you're in rare company!

How about the biggest NGS improvement for a pair? Technically, that was a score of +40.36 against par, but it was a pivot teams and they only played 3 boards together, so probably shouldn't count. The largest jump for a mature grade in a normal session was Rachel Calvert and Sarah Pendarves, who beat par by +34.18 on a bridge holiday in January.

We don't want to look at the worst scores of the year (we were all beginners once!), but the biggest NGS drop of the year by a mature partnership was -34.05 against par!

For the strongest session of the year we couldn't manage to top last year's Open Trials, although the final of this year's trials in January may well do. The strongest EBU sessions (and strongest overall) were:

Outside of national events, by far the strongest bridge was played in the London Super League, organised by Nick Sandqvist at the Young Chelsea. They actually took the top 14 spots, but their strongest heat was 64.79.

The Super League attracts a lot of very strong teams, so let's also mention the strongest "normal" club evening which was a smallish teams night at New Amersham Bridge Club on 30th April. Their SOF was 61.44.