News
The Kajaani Bridge Club in Finland started to use LoveBridge in the end of May. Recently the club celebrated its 50th anniversary with a Finland-wide bridge festival and they invited us to celebrate with them. We hosted a LoveBridge tournament, the results can be found
here.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 8 13 August 2019
The summer is not completely over yet, but our Summer Series has finished. 21 pairs played on the last day and they were not only competing for the first place of this competition, but also for the cumulated championship through the whole summer. The winners of the tournament are Gábor Macskásy with Gábor Szőts and with his last victory Macskásy became the most successful player of the ’19 Summer Series as well. The second best result of the eight weeks’ turned out to be a triple tie, Krisztián Tichler, István Kerti and Marcell Surányi finished with the same amount of points right behind Macskásy. You can find the results here.
We saw many interesting boards this week as well, let’s look at some of them.
Gábor Szőts in this board got the opportunity to make 9 tricks but he had to be careful to have enough communication between his hand and the dummy. Making the second overtrick in 1Nt resulted in 88,5%.
Here Gábor Macskásy realized that playing 5C in a pairs tournament will most likely be a bad board for them. This way going down in 6C couldn’t be much worse, so he risked bidding six in hope for a better result.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 7 6 August 2019
The seventh competition of the Summer Series is over and we have new winners. Out of the 22 pairs Ödön Dienes and László Sztrapkovics reached the highest percentage but there was a close fight between the best pairs until the end of the tournament.
This week’s boards were filled with the most interesting hands giving great bidding challenges to the players. The Hand of the Week was chosen out of them, the very last board:
East-West can easily make 13 tricks in hearts or clubs but they can’t really bid it since it depends on the heart finesse. North-South can try to save it in diamonds or spades but they should consider that they might as well push East-West into the grand slam. On the diagram above you can see László Honti’s save over 6 hearts. Not surprisingly there were many interesting solutions from both sides in this board and we are eager to hear what would you have done with these hands?
EUSA 26 July 2019
The 2019 European Universities Mindsports Championship took place in Budapest. 14 universities sent their players to compete in the bridge team’s championship. After four days of playing with a tight schedule the Kozminski University’s team (Warsaw, Poland) won the gold medal. The silver medalists were the players from the Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). They beat Kozminski University in the last round and they would have needed only 1 more VP to finish ahead of the Polish squad. The bronze medal went to Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Wroclaw, Poland).
On the second day of the event we organized a small evening pairs tournament. Not all juniors participated which is understandable after they have already played 64 board that day, but the ones who just cannot get enough of bridge were there. We filled the field with Hungarian players to reach 10 tables.
In this board after the diamond lead declarer wanted to get to the dummy somehow to lead clubs. After leading the queen of spades south took the trick with the king and led the king of hearts to reduce the chance of a club ruff. With the next spade lead declarer finally got to dummy and led a club to the jack after South playing small and played the ace of spades which was ruffed by North. At this point, North continued with the jack of hearts: sacrificing his trump trick and completely cutting declarer from dummy to earn 3 club tricks for his side. With this nice defense NS took away all the overtricks from declarer and scored almost 90%.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 5 23 July 2019
New week, new winners. Or we should rather say new winner, because one of the players from the victorious pair has already won a couple weeks ago, so she is not really new at winning. This time Brigitta Fischer won with Marcell Surányi.
Fischer is a member of the Hungarian U26 women team. They recently participated at the European Youth Teams championship, and they finished at the second place. Huge congratulations for the girls to the great result! We are very happy that they regularly play at our tournaments, raising the standards of the events.
They started very well and lead the field after 7 rounds, but from there they started to fall. The key move for finally winning happened in this board, when they played against their biggest rivals, Gábor Macskásy and László Honti. When Marcell Surányi opened the bidding with one heart, Fischer evaluated her cards right and didn’t force to game like some other Easts did. After her partner bid two hearts, she had to keep her temper once again and passed. Being the only pair stopping at two hearts they scored 90% and took the first place back.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 4 17 July 2019
We are already halfway trough our summer series, and the fourth week was full of great boards. 29 pairs showed up to compete for the first place and for the points to win the individual prize at the end of the summer. Now it’s almost a tradition that the last board changes the final rankings in the first 3 places. This week we saw a thrilling race again and the winners were Péter Gál and Gábor Macskásy. Sadly Péter Gál left the venue early so we couldn’t take a picture of him. With his result Macskásy is the first player who won twice.
This week’s play is a board you wouldn’t even notice scrolling trough the results. It’s just another part score deal, declarer scoring 61%. But it’s worth taking another look and giving it some thoughts, because Gábor Szőts’s defense is something you don’t see every day.
Winning the first trick with the ace was a good move from Brigitta Fischer then she took a round of spades and started to work on her diamonds. South won the trick with the ace and returned a heart. Declarer now played the eight of hearts, and at this point North realized if he takes the trick and returns a heart preparing a ruff for his partner, declarer can prevent it by taking the trick on the dummy and discarding a diamond on clubs. This way North could never win the trick with his diamond to lead a heart again, so he rather played a low card instead of taking the trick. Now they lost the chance to ruff, but got two heart tricks in the end. With this very hard to see move he took away declarer’s overtrick.
These little gems are the ones you would never know about without our vugraph where you can follow the table of anyone in the field.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 3 9 July 2019
Another week passed again and we held the 3rd round of our eight week long summer series. This time 20 pairs arrived to compete and with them, more than 60 players participated in the past 3 weeks. At the end of the series we will give individual prizes to the best players of the series, counting the five best results of each player. The winners of this week’s competition were Dániel Vikor and Tamás Szabó. They finished on the second place last Tuesday and now achieved an outstanding 67.17% result.
In this board you will find a beautiful declarer play from Gábor Macskásy making an overtrick in 4H.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 2 2 July 2019
The second competition of our Summer Series is over and it was just as interesting as the first one. This time 21 pairs entered and in the end Brigitta Fischer and Gábor Macskásy became the happy owners of our victory bears. There was a close race between the top finishers, the sixth pair was only one topscore behind Fischer and Macskásy who couldn’t have felt their first place safe until the end of the day.
This week, the president of the Hungarian Bridge Federation, Géza Homonnay visited us as well. Playing with his son, Bálint Homonnay, they had some interesting boards including this one here. After an unusual bid, East landed in two spades and he had to find a way to make it. He started to play and with only five tricks left, he figured out South’s remaining cards and endplayed him. Could South have seen into the future, he surely would have played his ace of clubs earlier, to avoid his uncomfortable faith.
PALATINUS JUNIOR BRIDGE 30 June 2019
The Palatinus bridge club started to use LoveBridge as soon as it was available and they’ve been regularly using it ever since. There is a tournament every Wednesday played on tablets with the main goal – besides playing bridge and having fun – of supporting Hungarian juniors. The event started in March and the concept is that a part of the entry fee is saved for various junior events so the young players have more opportunities to learn and improve their skills. By the end of June there were already 16 occasions and it doesn’t seem to stop any time soon. Each week the winners can go home with our signature prize, the victory bear on the picture.
SUMMER SERIES WEEK 1 25 June 2019
On the last week of June we held the first Tuesday tournament of the Summer Series ‘19. Sixteen pairs have played 26 boards, you can see the final results here.
Zsófia Bekő and Laura Érsek started well in the first round and were amongst the top pairs all the way through the tournament. Before the last round the top 3 pairs’ results were really close so Érsek and Bekő scored 100% on their last two boards to secure their first place.
Here you can see a nice declarer play from Laura Érsek making 3NT.
BAM 17-18 June 2019
On the 17-18th of June 2019 was the first BAM competition played on tablets. On Monday there was a qualifier round robin with 13 teams and on the next day the best four teams played the in finals while the rest of the field played on the consolation event. The finalists played semifinal (15 boards) first and the winners played in the final (15 boards), KO style. It was a big surprise for everyone when the result of the final was a tie but according to the rules the team with the most total points got the first place.
The final result of the finals:
- Bárány: György Bárány, Gábor Demeter, Gergely Fazakas, László Harangozó, László Bíró
- Palatinus: Katalin Mezei, László Honti, Gábor Szőts, Dániel Tubak
- Budaörs 17: György Kuttner, Ferenc Zöld, Miklós Fris, Gergely Kovács
- Honyek: András Honyek, Balázs Mérei, Péter Hodosi, Csaba Szabó
Fortune favors the brave. This phrase is sometimes true in bridge as well. Here you can see a brave declarer play by Péter Hodosi.
IMP PAIRS 4 June 2019
In 2019’s spring the first division of the IMP championship in Budapest was played on tablets. The eight weeks long event started in April and 32 pairs have participated. The Gábor Winkler – Miklós Dumbovich pair (on the pictures) was unstoppable during the championship. After the last week they won with 293 IMPs, which is more than twice as much, as the second pair László Szilágyi and Péter Talyigás finished with, who beat the third pair János Gellér and Dániel Tubak with 17 IMPs.
In this board not many pairs have reached 6D but Miklós Dumbovich was the only one making it after squeezing East in spades and clubs.
MUNICH 5 May 2019
On the 5th of May 2019, we held an exhibition in a bridge club in Munich. The main reason for the event was to introduce the system to the German Bridge Federation, from where two vice-pesidents were present, the leader of the sport department, Ulf Schäfer and the leader of the public relations department, Kareen Schroeder. Schroeder has been a member of the national women’s team for more than 10 years, and later she started to coach and to be the npc of various German national teams.
Few tried LoveBridge in Munich, but Oleksander Friedmann with György Weisz turned out to be the best. József Harsányi and Peter Klein finished on the second place just a little bit behind the first pair and Kareen Schroeder with Petra von Malchus finished on the 3rd place.
PULA SPRING 3 May 2019
Everybody knows and loves the Pula Bridge Festival in September, but some people might be unaware that there is another, smaller bridge festival in Pula in spring. Thanks to the organizers, LoveBridge had the opportunity to introduce itself in Croatia. Here you can see an interview with the winners of the experimental game at the 2019 spring Pula festival.
MP 13-14 April 2019
In 2019 the finals of the Hungarian MP pairs championship were played on tablets. In the semifinal - on the first day of the two-days tournament - 28 pairs have been competing to qualify to the finals. The first twelve pairs had the opportunity to play in the “A” final for the Hungarian champion title.
The final result was surprising because the winner pair was a first-time champion Zoltán Kalmár and Dániel Nieland. They had a great head start, and they kept their first place until the end of the event.
Usually, when you look at the results of a board and you see that only one pair found the successful 5H save over a 5C, you will never know the story behind it.
In this board only half of the field found the 5C contract and Csaba Czímer with Tamás Szalka (players of the multiple times Hungarian champion team Galim) were the only pair bidding 5H over it. Although Géza Homonnay and Bálint Homonnay (the president of the Hungarian bridge federation and his son) played well, the doubled five hearts double went down only once, their result scored even less matchpoints in the board than the east-west pairs who didn’t reach the game and played in a part-score.
18 February 2019
We are thankful for your many feedbacks, it really helps us improve the system. One of our new developments after the IBBF is that you are able to see the running scores on the tablet as well.
IBBF 13-17 February 2019
In February 2019, the 42nd International Budapest Bridge Festival was completely played on tablets. It was a five-day event, with mixed pairs, teams and open pairs tournaments. In the diverse field there were participants from 7 different countries. Thanks to the tablets and the closed screens, it was the quietest playing area during the rounds we have ever been to. The festival was more popular than last year with more participants in each category.
The mixed pairs tournament was held on Wednesday the 13th, the winners of the event were the Els Toutenel and Gergely Szentandrási, the silver medalist pair was Tímea Takács with Dániel Tubak, and Brigitta Fischer with Péter Talyigás finished on the third place.
In this board from the mixed pairs you can see an entertaining defense. In the second trick László Honti realized he has to take the trick with the ace of spades and return a heart. Declarer took it with dummy’s ace, crossed to her hand in spades and finessed the diamonds. Little did she know the king was offside when Honti played a small diamond. She crossed to her hand with the ace of clubs and tried to finesse in diamonds again but now Honti took the trick with the king, and defenders took all their tricks, the hearts and the king of clubs as well, this way the contract went down three times.
The teams tournament started on the next day. It was two days long with 22 teams. They played 11 rounds with 8 boards each.
- Bugris beltag
(Gyula Argay – Gergely Siba – János Gellér – Dániel Tubak) (on the picture) - Galim
(Péter Gál – György Kemény – Péter Marjai – Csaba Szabó) - Bucifej
(Péter Fehér – Dániel Vikor – Milan Macura – Dániel Bakó)
The pairs tournament took place in the weekend, where 52 pairs were competing in the qualifiers. After the first day 16 pairs qualified to the final and we organized a consolation event to the others. Here are the results of the final and the consolation:
Finals:
- Miklós Dumbovich – Gábor Winkler
- Péter Marjai – Csaba Szabó
- Adam Błachnio – Piotr Turowski
Consolation:
- András Pölöskei – Tamás Székelyhidi
- Zoltán Kalmás – Júlia Szalka
- Adam Suchodolski – Michał Wróblewski
12 February 2019.
Players can now upload convention cards and see the opponents’ convention cards on the tablet as well. This way you won’t have to print a new one for every round, because you simply cannot lose it. You can also get your results via e-mail, if you set your e-mail address.
December 2018
We have finished developing the teams tournament feature, we are looking forward to the IBBF to let it prove itself in front an international audience.
MP 4 December 2018.
In 2018/2019 the first division of the MP championship in Budapest was played on tablets. 32 pairs every Tuesday for eight weeks were competing using LoveBridge. For the first time, it gave the players from lower divisions the opportunity to watch the best Hungarian players playing.
People could really see the advantages of being able to replay the boards. Directors had no problem deciding if there was a break in tempo, they could just check the time data on their tablets, everybody followed suit, the cards were never put back incorrectly to the board. There were no arguments between the players about what happened in a board, they could see exactly how other players have played a contract, and how they bid to reach it. It also made writing articles about the tournament much easier.
Congratulations to the winners of the championship Géza Homonnay and Gábor Winkler, Brigitta Fischer and Gábor Macskásy finished on the second place, and just a little bit behind them, with a really good result on the last day Péter Gál and György Kemény.
Let’s see some interesting boards from the tournament.
Here you can see a brilliant defense from the victorious Winkler – Homonnay pair. Opponents played 3H, and with an unusual technic, Winkler chose not to overruff the declarer, but to discard spades instead, thus making the contract going down twice.
This board was at the end of the last day, North-South (Sándor Jakab and László Sztrapkovics) really needed a good result, to stay in the first division. This is why South accepted the slam invitation despite having a bad distribution, and chose the no trump instead of playing in the 5-3 fit in hearts. The contract is not the most promising, but it’s not impossible. They can have five heart tricks, four diamonds and the ace of clubs. One of the spade honors can take a trick as well, and the twelfth trick can be the queen of clubs with and endplay.
After a heart lead Sztrapkovics took the trick with the jack, played 3 high hearts, and finessed the queen of spades and won the trick. Crossed to the dummy, took the rest of the hearts, and came back to his hand with the ace of diamonds. Now, the ten of diamonds is played, and east doesn’t have anything to discard. Either he discards a club, so the king wouldn’t take a trick, or a spade, and then after taking the king of spades, he must lead from the KJ of clubs.
Here you can see another interesting slam. After the precision bidding Magdolna Topolyi and Jácint Welker were the only pair playing 6C in this board. North was on lead, and unlucky for them, she couldn’t find the ace of spades lead, which was the only one, that could beat the slam. On the diamond lead, west found the winning play. Took the clubs, finessed the K of diamonds, and discarded a spade on the last one. Now she played the spade to North who found herself endplayed.
November 2018
Many personal settings are now available to make the playing more comfortable. These settings will follow the players around in the room, so they don’t have to set it every time they move to another table. For example, to avoid misclicks in bidding we have the option for a player to take back their bid before it is visible to other players, and now they can choose how long this time should last, they can even choose not to have this option.
IMP 17 November 2018
The first national championship played on tablets were the finals and the semifinals of the 2018’s Hungarian IMP pairs championship. The winners of the finals are Dániel Gulyás and Balázs Kotányi, the players of the second-best pair are Gyula Argay and Gergely Siba, and Zsuzsanna Kerekes with Sándor Varga finished in the third place.
You can find an interesting board from the tournament here. When there were still 8 cards in play, Dumbovich played the ace of clubs, to “eat” his partners king (that’s why it’s called the crocodile), to prevent his partner from being endplayed.
ORLANDO EXHIBITION September 2018
In 2018 we had a chance in Orlando (15th Worlds Bridge Series) to show LoveBridge to some of the best bridge players in the world. It was a small 10 board tournament, where the players could experience how the system works and how does it feel to play without holding cards and being completely separated from your partner. In this tournament not only a closed screen separated the players, but they sat at completely different tables, North and East at one, and South with West at an other one. This way they could still discuss the bidding and carding with the opponent, but there was no chance that their partners would hear it. The winners of the event were Joe Grue and Brad Moss. The players enjoyed the LoveBridge tablets very much, "It was much better than expected" stated Boye Brogeland, who came second on this event with his partner, Ole Fuglestad. (On the picture: Peter Fredin and Joe Grue)
August 2018
After our first tournament series in 2018 summer, we have redesigned our user interface based on the many feedbacks from the players. For example, we have developed a brand-new system for the players to see the cards after a trick for as long as they need, without holding up the game.
SUMMER SERIES 7-8 June 2018
In the summer of 2018 we have organized our first two LoveBridge tournament series, to present the system to the Hungarian bridge community. Both series were supposed to have 8-8 occasions during the span of eight weeks, one of them at the Böszörményi road, where you can find the official tournament room of the Hungarian Bridge Federation, the other one in the Palatinus Bridge Club. We are grateful for the Palatinus club, as they were the first bridge club to support us, and happily accommodated our test tournament with all the possible risks and inconveniences, but in the end, the tournaments were loved, and became very popular amongst the players. However, we've faced a small technical difficulty on the 7th week at the Böszörményi road. There was a power blackout. Still, our server was up and running, the tablets were charged as well, so it looked like the tournament can still be finished, but we had to send the players home after all, because they were bumping into the tables and chairs every time they tried to change to the next one. On the picture below you can see the happy winners of the first week in the Palatinus club.
OSTEND 15 June 2018
During the 54th European Bridge Team Championships in Ostend we held a small exhibition, a ten-board tournament. Here, amongst the players some members of the WBF could have tried LoveBridge as well. In the video you can see, what a small tournament looks like on tablets, as well as the reaction of the players.
29 April 2018
Our first tournament. Great expectations. The week before the event we were trying and testing the software at the venue. Volunteer bridge players came to help us to see if everything works well.
28 April 2018
We were honored when the president of the WBF, Gianarrigo Rona visited Hungary only to try and see LoveBridge. We have played a couple
boards, Gál Hegedűs’ defense made the event memorable.
