May 2019 Newsletter 2019 Noosa Bridge Club Inc. From the President As I start my second term as President I thank all the members who encouraged me to nominate again and I express my appreciation for the support I received from the members who attended the Annual General Meeting. We have a new Management Committee for 2019/20 with a good blend of old and new members. I am pleased to welcome back the all of the office bearers as well as five members of last year’s committee and I especially welcome the three new committee members. There is a good diversity of opinions among the members which leads to some lively and constructive discussions at our Management Committee meetings. The Management Committee will continue to investigate ways to increase attendances at our congresses. Our next event is the Noosa Pairs Congress on Thursday 13 June. We are promoting this in conjunction with Sunshine Coast club who are conducting a Walk In Pairs on the Friday followed by Pairs and Teams at the weekend as “Four Days of Bridge” on the Sunshine Coast. The beneficiaries of our charity days this year will be Sunshine Coast Riding for the Disabled, Oz Harvest and Katie Rose Cottage. We will also conduct Santa Classy Lady Christmas Appeal again in November. I encourage all of our members to give generous support to these worthy charities. Ross Gyde Around the Club New Members: Jenny Aitken Persephone Lobb Charles Burne Iven MacLeod Michael Huddart David Richards Jill Larcombe Harry Sollander New Management Committee: Officer Bearers: President – Ross Gyde Vice President – Adam Hertelendy Secretary – Syl Thiebaud Treasurer – Gerald Schaaf Committee: Ian Callcott Ted McNamara Katherine Collins Alexa Parker Pam Hawkins Don Robertson Gilly Hogarth Sue Smith First Aid / CPR Refresher On the 30 April, the Club’s First Aid Providers undertook their CPR Refresher Course. All of them passed the theory and practical tests. They are Lizi French, Di Quigley, Jannelle Kipping, Helen Lawson, Di Musgrave, Maddy Nielsen, Alexa Parker, Tim Ridley, Louise Ryan, Sue Smith, Penny Sykes, Rod Sykes, Daniel Thiebaud and Syl Thiebaud. “We all wish you good health!” Our first Charity Day will be held on Friday 7 June in aid of Sunshine Coast Riding for the Disabled Inc. They are a not-for-profit organisation providing equine-based therapeutic and recreational riding and driving programs for all members of the disability community on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
Transcript
May 2019
Newsletter
2019 Noosa Bridge Club Inc.
From the President As I start my second term as President I thank all the members who encouraged me to nominate again and I express my appreciation for the support I received from the members who attended the Annual General Meeting. We have a new Management Committee for 2019/20 with a good blend of old and new members. I am pleased to welcome back the all of the office bearers as well as five members of last year’s committee and I especially welcome the three new committee members. There is a good diversity of opinions among the members which leads to some lively and constructive discussions at our Management Committee meetings. The Management Committee will continue to investigate ways to increase attendances at our congresses. Our next event is the Noosa Pairs Congress on Thursday 13 June. We are promoting this in conjunction with Sunshine Coast club who are conducting a Walk In Pairs on the Friday followed by Pairs and Teams at the weekend as “Four Days of Bridge” on the Sunshine Coast. The beneficiaries of our charity days this year will be Sunshine Coast Riding for the Disabled, Oz Harvest and Katie Rose Cottage. We will also conduct Santa Classy Lady Christmas Appeal again in November. I encourage all of our members to give generous support to these worthy charities.
Ross Gyde
Around the Club
New Members: Jenny Aitken Persephone Lobb Charles Burne Iven MacLeod Michael Huddart David Richards Jill Larcombe Harry Sollander
New Management Committee:
Officer Bearers:
President – Ross Gyde
Vice President – Adam Hertelendy
Secretary – Syl Thiebaud
Treasurer – Gerald Schaaf
Committee:
Ian Callcott Ted McNamara
Katherine Collins Alexa Parker
Pam Hawkins Don Robertson
Gilly Hogarth Sue Smith
First Aid / CPR Refresher
On the 30 April, the Club’s First Aid Providers undertook their CPR Refresher Course. All of them passed the theory and practical tests.
They are Lizi French, Di Quigley, Jannelle Kipping, Helen Lawson, Di Musgrave, Maddy Nielsen, Alexa Parker, Tim Ridley, Louise Ryan, Sue Smith, Penny Sykes, Rod Sykes, Daniel Thiebaud and Syl Thiebaud.
“We all wish you good health!”
Our first Charity Day will be held on Friday 7 June in aid of Sunshine Coast Riding for the Disabled Inc. They are a not-for-profit organisation providing equine-based therapeutic and recreational riding and driving programs for all members of the disability community on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
Masterpoints Many newcomers to the game of Bridge find themselves a bit puzzled at this “points business”. What is it all about?
Put quite simply Bridge like many other sports (tennis, golf and others), has developed a points’ system to express the relative playing strengths and competences of its players. Parallel to the points comes a rank.
In Australia we have Masterpoints (MP) in the 3 colours of gold, red and green. Roughly speaking one can win green points for good results at the local, affiliated club, red points at regional tournaments and gold points at national events. All points you win keep accumulating over the time of one’s Bridge career. The Australian Bridge Federation (ABF) does the necessary bookkeeping for you.
When one reaches a certain threshold points figure, one reaches the next rank. This starts at 2 MP, when you become a Graduate, next is 5 MP (Club Master), and continues to 300 MP (Life Master) all the way to 1000 MP (Grand Master). I believe the highest ranked players in Australia at present are Emerald Grand Masters (>10,000 MP), of which there are 8 only. Our club reads out the players who reach a new rank, in order to acknowledge their achievements.
All further details on the Masterpoints, including your personal account, can be found on the website of: www.abfmasterpoints.com.au
Florence Grubanovich Her father came from County Mayo; her mother from Galway. It sounds like the lyrics of a beautiful ballad. Add a husband from Hungary, life in the then Kingdom of Libya, a sabbatical in the then frightfully French Tunisia and you have the enigma that is amazing painter Florence Grubanovich.
Starting out life during the Second World War with those lyrical parents in Dublin, young Florence Kennedy was schooled by the Dominicans and then at the Loreto ’motherhouse’, the headquarters of the religious institute.
Although she was an outstanding student at art, her father firmly believed in job security, and helped her find a clerical job at the Irish National Sweepstakes, an organisation founded after the war to help fund hospitals. Job security it was, but also slightly boring, so young Florence took off for London. She settled in Kensington. Sad to say, it was not the duchess end, but the western bit, somewhat closer to Earl’s Court than Kensington Palace. Again, Florence settled into a clerical job but then she saw an advertisement recruiting people to join an American oil company in the Middle East. Even though the Beatles were transforming the scene in London she opted for Libya. The Americans needed the antithesis of a mini-skirted dolly bird for the super-sensitive role of liaising with the Libyan people, and after vetting the recruitment photographs the PR Department handed the job to the obviously very well-behaved Florence.
Libya was still a Kingdom under the rule of Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi and in the mid 1960s the fourth largest oil producer in the world. The night clubs and lovely cafés established under the former Italian regime were still flourishing and life as an ex-pat was great fun. However it all changed after Muammar Gaddafi led a victorious coup d’état in 1969. Florence found that the local people were no longer as friendly and after another year doing her liaison work she decided to leave and holiday with a friend in Tunisia. Although it had gained independence from the French in 1956 Tunisia was still frequented by Parisians. Her friend from Ireland had married a Tunisian — with the help of Florence in the best Irish matchmaking tradition. She had a marvellous year there, polishing up her French and soaking up the local culture. Back to reality and Ireland, Miss Kennedy became the Personal Assistant to the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Ireland, based at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Founded by revered poet William Butler Yeats and Irish dramatist Lady Gregory, the theatre favoured Irish plays. Maybe that’s why Florence and her colleagues endured a bomb scare, the sort of scare one took very seriously those days in Ireland. The play for which they were staging a full dress rehearsal was actually Shakespeare’s Macbeth. So out into the street went everyone, in period Scottish costume, to the delight of passers-by. The bomb did not go off, so according to Florence they all went to the pub. The travel bug had bitten our Florence and she decided to visit a cousin in Australia and then see Papua-New Guinea. She made it to Oz in 1972 and started working for a land developer in Sydney. The sales manager was an extremely good-looking and utterly charming Hungarian called Geza Grubanovich, so she crossed PNG off her bucket list.
Home became Northbridge where Geza set up his own real estate agency. Florence had her favourite job of all time, working for the Assistant General Manager of Grace Brothers at Chatswood. Old Mr Grace (group Chairman Bertram Augustus ‘Mick’ Grace) was still alive, running the place like a family and Florence had a marvellous time looking after all of them. Noosa then came on their horizon and the couple established a macadamia orchard at Cootharaba. Soon it took over their lives and they moved up here to build a dwelling on the farm. Macadamia trees are kind to their keepers, giving them two or three months a year when they just grow and no-one has to do much for them. Left to her own devices for the first time in her life, Florence started painting.
And from this unassuming, well-behaved lady of sound Irish stock emerged the most amazing, vibrant and totally original paintings. None of the art boffins have been able to categorise them, nor has Florence. It’s as if Gustav Klimt’s paintbox fell into the hands of Jacques Rousseau when he was trying to copy Gaugin while listening to a symphony composed by Van Gogh. There, I told you it was impossible to describe them.
Florence admits she is drawn to what she perceives to be exotic. Her paintings are naive, the figures androgynous, and while Chagall did like the occasional cow floating sky-high in his masterpieces, Florence has an affinity for ducks. Her one and only major exhibition in Noosa Heads a few years ago was a complete sell-out, and a huge hit with younger buyers.
The wardrobes in her beloved house at Noosa Waters are crammed with canvases. She and her husband moved there soon after it was developed and Geza built several houses in the area. Cancer took him in 2002 and now Florence divides her time between the Bridge Club and trips home to Ireland, with Middle Eastern detours en route.
On a recent trip she met her Dutch sister-in-law’s nephew, aged about 18. Gazing at photos of Florence’s paintings he could not believe they came from “a little old lady like that”. We do not agree with the ‘little’ or ‘old’, but must admit they are utterly amazing and glorious paintings. And their brilliant creator is sitting just over there, playing bridge.
National Teaching Co-ordinator, Joan Butts, wrote an article in the QBA Bulletin of July-September 2018, on this subject.
When the partnership has bid three suits, and the next bidder can tell that the values for game (or higher) are present, it may still be unclear what strain offers the best contract.
For example the hand below is taken from Joan's article. The bidding has been: East West
1D 1S 2C
♠ A J 4 3 ♥ 8 7 6 4 ♦ 8 6 5 ♣ A 3
♠ K Q T 8 6 ♥ J 5 ♦ K Q 2 ♣ Q J 5
♠ 9 ♥ A T 3 ♦ A J 7 4 3 ♣ K T 4 2
♠ 7 5 2 ♥ K Q 9 2 ♦ T 9 ♣ 9 8 7 6
West knows that the partnership has the points for game, but which game is the most likely to succeed? 4S if E has 3-card support? 5D if E has the right controls. Or 3NT if E has some honour cards in Hs?
How does W seek the answers she needs? She bids the 4th suit, 2H. This is totally artificial, forcing to game, asking E to further describe his hand. With his two honours in Hs, E completes the description of his hand by bidding 2NT, and W continues to 3NT, their best contract.
As you can see, contracts of 4S or 5D will fail, on a H lead.
To help members further research this topic, copies of Joan's full article will be available in the plastic holder beside the dealing room door. Also books on Conventions in the Club's library will have coverage, as will numerous bridge websites.
Geoff Hart
ABF’s Daily Column
… That you can improve your bridge with the ABF’s Daily Column. Led by Ron Klinger, 7 renowned bridge players will each contribute a column one day a week for a year. The column will be delivered by the ABF to your phone, tablet or computer. Annual subscription plan $52. Columns started 1 March 2019. For details: www.ABF.com/daily-Column
Fire Evacuation
Calmly inform a Committee Member about a suspicious occurrence.
Follow Committee Members directives for evacuation through Eastern and/or Southern and/or kitchen exit.
Keep track of your partner - that is the only way to know everybody is out.
Help people with walking aids.
Muster point is the field car-park. Keep driveways free for fire-brigade.
Flu & Cold Season Sneezing, coughing, blowing noses are sounds we do not want to hear in the Club this season! If you are showing any sign of cold or flu, please show basic respect to your fellow-players and stay away. Even your partner will be grateful for not sharing your germs!
A big thank you to Noosa Council for their support in regard to parking issues during the recent Amma event.
