The Malta Bridge Club organise Teams Championship

The Malta Bridge Club Teams championship was played over three sessions on the 13th, 20th and 25th of February. Five teams competed and the result was 1st, Joan Consiglio, Irene Naudi, Nathalie Marlin and Graham Penney.

In second place were Kathy Williams, David Olliver, Bjarni Kristjansson and Svetlana Roukhliada. The performance of a new team made up of Lydia Bonello, Marcelle Sultana, Rosanne Zammit and myself and substitute Margaret Wood was very promising.

After a disastrous start this team managed to come second in the 2nd session and 1st in the third. But in bridge it is victory points over the three sessions that count so they were not able to make up for the bad start.

It is encouraging to see new teams compete. They were given a well deserved consolation prize. I hope this will encourage them and other new teams to enter the national Teams competition to be played in April.

The Sigma cup is still being played so we don’t have a winning pair yet.

On the International front I am quoting from the editorial of the IBPA magazine of which I am a member.

“The WBF’s unconsummated love affair with the Olympics has unintended consequences with the bridge world.

“The problem with belonging to Olympic organisations is that all players in the sport world have the same rules. This means mainly, drugs and proscribed substances. There are hard repercussions for players violating these regulations. In Bridge since 2002 there has been only 1 player banned for drugs and 1 player was banned for refusing to take the test.

“There is a problem with bridge which is far greater than other sports and this is cheating. The penalties for cheating, given out by the NOCs, is not adequate when it comes to bridge. There is such a thing in bridge called collusion. Collusion is the capital crime in bridge. This should be treated as such and not as just a misdemeanour.

“That is our problem. When a player appeals to the NCOs their judgement of collusion is inadequate. What all this is illustrating is the bridge world has lost the power to punish miscreants appropriately even when the case of cheating is overwhelming.”

The 54th European team championship will be held in Ostend from the 6th to the 16th of June. Malta hosted this championship with great success in 1999.

It is not known yet if Malta will be sending a team to participate.