We are back! Welcome to 2021, the year when we all hope that face to face bridge may return, although it would be foolish to predict it happening with any confidence. I hope that you have all enjoyed as good a Christmas as circumstances allowed and are now ready to get back to the virtual card table and see those lockdown blues.

The first two-hour Monday morning seminar will not be kicking off until tomorrow week (January 11th). Continuing with the format we had before Christmas, each session will start with half a dozen hands around a common theme, followed by a series of randomly dealt hands that I have not seen before. The first few seminar themes I expect to be devoted to the play of the cards, although the bidding of each hand will also of course be reviewed. The level is intermediate. You can sign up in the usual way either from this email or with the payment button in the sidebar of the website. Suggestions for topics always welcome.

The normal Tuesday morning supervised play session will however be starting again this week (5th January), starting at 9.30am. I shall look forward to seeing you all. Please let me know as early possible that you intend to join, ideally by early Monday event as it makes it so much easier to arrange the tables and reduce the risk of having to turn one of you away.

Our popular group coaching sessions will also resume as normal this week. Please let me know if for any reason you think that your group may not wish to continue with their regular session. There is always more demand for these slots than I have capacity for, so knowing in advance whether you expect to make them is helpful. I still have some other professional commitments to fit in during the week as well, so all the more reason to confirm your regular slot if you can……

Here’s hoping again for a better 2021.

Jonathan

PS It looks like my grandson and his parents are going to be completing on the purchase of a house in Charlbury soon, so that opens up the possibility of resuming bridge lessons there, as well as in Wytham, as and when the ability to play face to face resumes. Fingers crossed!

So this is it – the first time in months that I am going to have to say “sorry, but there are no bridge sessions this week”. Bridge in Oxford is taking a break to enjoy….well, not a lot, if truth be told. With most of the country in one kind of lockdown or another, and Christmas cancelled for many, this week is certainly going to be a quiet one, a chance to do some boring admin (ugh), reflect on the year just gone and make some plans for next year.

Everything will be back to normal in the first week of the New Year and it may be, given recent events, that I can fit in some bridge sessions in the week after Christmas. If so, I will notify you accordingly. I shall be disappointed if some at least of you don’t find the time to play some bridge over the holiday period. In 2021 I expect to investigate using a different bridge website for the Tuesday morning sessions and maybe some of the coaching sessions as well.

As some you will know, away from the bridge table I edit and publish an annual handbook about investment trusts which finally appeared this week, so I have been busy some interviews and podcasts to help promote the latest edition, which I’m happy to say is selling well. I am however planning to find the time to play in a couple of tournaments – including one this weekend which is being held to help the international campaign against cheating in online events (you would be surprised how widespread this has been) – and hope to add to my growing stock of interesting hands to play through on Mondays in the weeks ahead.

I do want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been able to join us this year for a seminar, Tuesday morning group play or one of the dozen or so group coaching sessions that have been running for something like 40 weeks now. Starting the coaching sessions was a spur of the moment idea, designed to be a temporary fix when face to face bridge sessions had to be halted back in March.

I never imagined we would still be doing them nine months later. As it turns out, they have proved to be a great way to learn and improve your game, as well as a nice way for close friends to stay in touch and newcomers to make new acquaintances. From my perspective, the sessions have enabled me to get to know a lot of you much better, down to and including an insight into the way you decorate your homes……Most encouraging of all, I have been able to observe the tremendous improvement that every one of you has made as a bridge player with the help of these regular training sessions.

The contest for most improved player has been intense all year, and I am afraid that I have been unable to pick a winner from the many strong candidates. (Thank you, Phil, for the offer of a bribe, but nothing has yet arrived – probably delayed in the post). As I have told you many times, bridge is a game where everyone can be a winner – but the most important thing is never to lose sight of the fact that it is a game, something to be amused and entertained by, to add to its proven qualities as a source of mental health and wellbeing.

Instead of a Christmas card, I would like to leave you with a couple of images from our sessions in Wytham Village Hall and express the wish that you all have as good a Christmas as circumstances allow, and that at some point next year we will be able to have our first face to face bridge session for what has been a long time. In the meantime, many thanks again for your support and may your suits always split and your finesses succeed.

Here’s hoping for a better 2021.

Jonathan

The two-hour Monday morning seminar tomorrow (December 14th) will be a mixture of a single topic and another Play These Hands With Me session. Last week was a run through of the play of several hands from the annual Portland Club duplicate competition, in which my partner and I were narrowly pipped for the top spot. To sign up for this and Tuesday bridge there are Paypal payment buttons in this post and also in the sidebar of most pages on the website.

There will be the normal Tuesday morning supervised play session again this week (15th December), starting at 9.30am. Please let me know as early possible that you intend to join, ideally by early Monday event as it makes it so much easier to arrange the tables and reduce the risk of having to turn one of you away. Annabel will be back this week, so we should be able to run the full four-table session as normal.

Most of the group sessions also continue as normal this week, although some of you are already rowing back ahead of the unusual Christmas break we are all facing this year. Looking ahead, my plan is to take the week off running up to Christmas Day, so there will be no bridge lessons or sessions that week. The week after Christmas there may well be some bridge available. Will send out more details of that next week.

On a less festive note I shall be going through my records as the year end approaches and checking whether everyone has paid up to date. The great majority of you have done so, but there may been or two who are inadvertently a little behind. I can only thank you all for your support this year and very glad that we have been able to keep bridge going, despite not having played a face to face hand since the dark days of March.

Here’s hoping for a better 2021.

Jonathan