The main items of business were dealt with as follows:

a) It was agreed to discontinue the Contingency Fund.

b) It was agreed to raise the table money by 50p and this is now £2.50 (visitors £3.50).

c) The only "new" member elected to the committee is Lindsay Barnes.

All members should be aware that at the first meeting of the Committee after the AGM ( 13th November), the Committee appoints the Club Chairperson. The next newsletter will list all the members of the Committee.

There were only 4.5 tables attended the above heat and the winners were Mike Asher and Peter Dawson. Although everyone enjoyed themselves, it was a disappointing attendance.

One of the ways in which your Committee tries to cater for all members is to place two of our four annual Simultaneous Pairs heats on Wednesday, which is a "non-bridge" night. However, numbers have declined in the last three years & unless they go up again in the next Wednesday heat after Xmas ( Wednesday, 9th January), your Committee may stop holding Wednesday night heats in the future.

3. It was with regret that I had to announce the death of another member of the Club in late September. Sybil Levy went into hospital with a "seeming" mild condition, only to have a severe heart attack and die the next day. The Club sent a card to her next of kin.

Since we moved to St Peter's in March there has been a definite drop in attendance. Averaging out the attendances over several months, we are a little over five tables per week fewer than we were at the last venue. This, in itself, is not too important; what matters is that we have an agreed annual rent to pay to St Peter's for several years to come and our present income is not sufficient to pay this. Because of the money from the Contingency Fund & the money in our Reserves, we are in no immediate danger of closing, but all members will readily see that this is not a satisfactory state of affairs.

I think that we will have a slightly better picture when all annual subscriptions are paid. At this moment in time, we have about 280 members but some of these have not been seen since we moved and others come very rarely.

The Contingency fund brought in about £3,300 per year and the Club cannot afford to lose this income, because it just about balances the loss in income we are suffering by the reduction of over 5 tables per week. The members at the AGM agreed with this view and agreed to increase table money by 50p, at the same time discontinuing the Contingency fund.

Please note that this has been cancelled. In order to run the party, it is essential that a member of the Committee be responsible for it and at the last Committee meeting, no member of the Committee would accept the responsibility. I know that several Club members would be only too willing to help, but this is not the same as having overall responsibility and being "in charge". It does not matter where the party is held or whether we self-cater, the situation does not change because it still needs a member of the Committee to be in charge.

About 60 to 80 members have enjoyed a party year after year & it is sad that it had to lapse in this manner.

Two incidents spring to mind as having arisen at our Club in the last two months.

The first is the use of an illegal defence when opponents have opened 1NT. The bidding went (where E1 stands for an opponent) :-

E1 Partner E2 You

1NT 2C* pass 2H

pass 3C all pass

It turned out that partner had 6 Clubs & was using Stayman as a means of arriving at a 3C contract. This is an illegal bidding sequence and is not allowed. It is totally different from the eminently respectable auction:-

E1 Partner E2 You

pass 1NT pass 2C*

pass 2D/2H/2S pass 3C

all pass

In the first case, the opponents have opened 1NT, whereas in the second case, your side has opened 1NT.

All systems have to be licensed by the EBU and the first case above does not feature in any of the five licensed system convention levels of the EBU. There is no objection whatsoever to the second bidding sequence.

Partner E1 You E2

1NT pass 2NT pass

3NT pass 3NT

You immediately realise that 3NT has already been bid by partner and say "Oh dear, I meant to pass now that we have reached 3NT "

This is an insufficient bid & if not accepted by the opponents, then one option is for the player who made the 2nd 3NT bid to withdraw it and pass. There are no lead penalties because partner is declarer. Also, you should gently chastise the player for his comment: "Oh dear, I meant ………."