Barry's Blog 13

In my brief time here at the EBU it has become clear that the EBU has, over the years, provided too little to its core membership, and its clubs. We have spent much of our time developing our good reputation for running tournaments and congresses.

We are, therefore, concentrating our attentions on the delivery of meaningful and helpful services to our clubs and the mass of the members of the EBU that are not regular tournament players. As a result, it was decided by the Board a few months ago that we should create two new posts - these are a Club Liaison Officer and a Communications Officer.

We are well advanced in the hiring for both positions and I would expect them to be filled within the next three weeks.

The duties of the Club Liaison Officer will include the fundamental task of being an accessible and visible face of the EBU to its affiliated clubs; most of whom have never seen anyone from the EBU at their club. The CLO will visit as many clubs as is practicable and will be available for consultation with club committees or management and its members, before hopefully playing and thus meeting many of those present at that session. This will help the CLO cultivate a wealth of knowledge about clubs and their needs, helping them overcome any problems they may face. The CLO will also work with our County colleagues to get as much coverage within the country as possible. The CLO will also be working with our Communications Officer to help us increase the visibility of bridge clubs in the community. Together they will compile a new electronic club newsletter and web forum, to allow interaction of the EBU membership online.

The CLO will help us develop valued services especially helping clubs develop through the Focus on Value education project and the Partner Teacher scheme.

Partner Teachers and Partner clubs are beginning to move forward and the first Learn and Play clubs are now being formed. Indeed next month a new club is being launched in Kent with some novel publicity. I expect that this will feature in a future article in English Bridge, so more later.

We have now run two courses for Partner Teachers, and have trained some brand new EBUTA teachers as well as adding to the skills of a number of existing teachers who are considering becoming full Partner Teachers. The next course is due to be run during the week of the Brighton Summer Congress. We have room for more attendees; please contact click here for more information or click here to email Lisa Miller who will be pleased to help you.

More "new beginnings" include our new Editor for English Bridge, Elena Jeronimidis, who brings many years of experience in the Bridge magazine field to us. She is full of ideas and contacts that will help onward development of our members' magazine and build on the excellent work done by our departing Editor, Brian Cook, who we wish well in the future. Elena's first issue will be in August.

We are keeping a watchful eye on new technology developments in the bridge market and we are beginning the redevelopment of software used in our own congresses so that we can make increasing use of current technologies such as Bridgemate.

Lots of activity, lots to do...

Barry's Blog 12

At the end of March I got my first taste of representative Bridge. The Corn Cairdis ("The Cup of Friendship") is played for annually between a team from England and a team from Ireland. The competition was started to fill a gap back in the days when the Irish never participated in the Camrose home internationals - these days they win it!

Anyway, the team consists of a team from a club, a team from a county and an "officials" team - which is, of course, the only way that I could possibly creep into a representative team. The English team is picked by the EBU Chairman and he cast his net widely.

Being a "friendly" the arrangements for playing are, of course, very convivial. All visiting players are accommodated in private houses. The match itself was played in the University of Ireland, Galway so it was very nice indeed and served to make us feel important!

Each team plays its counterpart twice and the others once. At the end of the first day we had a lead of just four victory points which was VERY close. The second day started with all three of our teams winning their matches and we took what proved to be an unassailable lead, though it got severely trimmed by the end! The English now lead 9-6 in the series, breaking a string of three consecutive wins by our Irish counterparts. There will be a more detailed article in due course in English Bridge - there were several superb hands which are worthy of comment, though not by me!

Before we got to Galway my team, the Officials, first went to Dublin for a chat with the management team there and of course we played bridge in the evening in the superb surroundings of the Templeogue Bridge centre, which is part of the CBAI complex. Again, great fun; I was partnered with a very bubbly Irish International who was VERY tolerant of my overall play. Thanks Gilda - great experience for me!

I can confirm my overall experience of playing bridge in Ireland - something mentioned in a previous blog, as excellent. Everything just happens - without much ado about anything. Not one director call that I can remember in 80 hands of bridge!

Closer to home, we are again working on improving the implementation of the Best Behaviour @ Bridge policy brought in last year. We are trying to get standardised penalties published so that all players will be aware of what they are letting themselves in for if the “red mist” rises! It would also be nice if BB@B was adopted for use in all of our clubs but that is a matter for each club to consider.

I am pleased to say that the Bracketed Teams in Canterbury in March was a success. This first ever EBU "bracketed" tournament was run by the Kent Association as an attempt to vary their programme from the traditional Swiss Team/Swiss Pairs formula. Of course, not everyone was happy but most seemed to be, with the responses to a post tournament survey being conclusively in favour, at least of trying more. Forty six teams took part, with about a dozen people either brand new or fairly new to Green Point events participating, which was one of the main points of the new formula. I am fairly confident that the trial of such events will continue.

Finally, I have been given the green light by the EBU Board to do some more detailed work on a national player rating system to run alongside the well established master point scheme. This will be a long term project as it requires several things to be in place before it can come into being.

I will, of course, keep you updated on progress.