After the debutation of LoveBridge Bid+Score at the 28^th European Youth Bridge Championships in Veldhoven last year, the EBL decided to use the advantages of LoveBridge again at the 4^th European Winter Games in Tignes.

Although the broadcast feature is not available for the Bid+Score app just for the LoveBridge One, we helped display the bidding on the official results side and made the Tournament Directors’ work much easier with our system during the knockout sessions.

We hope everyone enjoyed the game and will continue to attend many more tournaments hosted by LoveBridge. Until then, browse our online archive and learn from your personal statistics.

After a seemingly endless break in live play due to the COVID-19 pandemic finally there was a bridge tournament in Hungary. The 50^th Miners’ Cup was held in Tatabánya, and for better safety the organizers decided to play the competition on tablets. The organizers were planning to have a huge tournament for this year’s anniversary, but the circumstances did not allow it.

The cup was played on the 15-16^th of August on the weekend. On Saturday there was a teams tournament with 12 teams participating. They played 8 matches of 8 boards, here you can find all of the results of the first and the second session.

The final rankings on the first 3 positions are the following:

1. Pipacsi: György Kuttner – Csaba Címer – Zsuzsa Hámori – Hanka Lajos
2. Dunaújváros: Barnabás Bánhegyi – Barnabás Bánhegyi ifj – Gábor Kállai – Gábor Rombauer
3. Palatinus:Katalin Mezei – Ödön Dienes – László Honti – István Varga

On Sunday there was a pairs tournament with 40 pairs. However, all eyes were on 6 pairs. This was the first tournament for 6 juniors, who were the most diligent students from the online bridge course started by the federation in May. As soon as it was allowed, they had live trainings as well. This tournament was offered for the beginners as a prize for those, who participated in the most training sessions during the summer. They all played with one of their mentors, and they surpassed all expectations with their great performance. One of the beginners, Barnabás Tarcali finished on third place with his mentor, Péter Hodosi. József Földi and András Kovács got the second prize, and Levente Kaderják with László Molnár won the tournament.

Here is a nice move from Barnabás Tarcali. His opponent played 3NT, and his partner led the 6 of clubs by the rule of 11. After declarer took the trick with the king Janka Jalsovszky played a spade, and Tarcali overtook his partners winning 8 of spades, to be able to lead clubs from his hand to finesse declarer’s honors.

At other tables it was challenging even to take 9 tricks, here you can see and endplay from Dienes to take the 9th trick.

During the summer we have worked on making LoveBridge more accessible. We are ready with our cloud-based system. This allows organizers to run tournaments without using a local server. Our system has now a simplified interface designed for clubs. With this version, it takes only a few minutes to organize a one session pairs tournament.

For our first few new clubs we have a special starter package with the possibility to rent tablets from us and enjoy a trial period to see how LoveBridge works in their own club.

Playing bridge on tablets can help cope COVID-19, without using the cards and bidding boxes, you can play in safer circumstances. Players don’t even have to touch the tablets, the starter package contains enough stylus pens for every player, what they can carry with themselves during a competition. The tablets are easy to sanitize, so you don’t have to worry about using them again in the next tournament. For more information, please contact us.

The 43^rd International Budapest Bridge Festival was held successfully with a much higher participation than expected. The bridge tournaments in the past years in Hungary had less and less participants. This tendency seems to have turned around at the IBBF, with the record number of players. The entry list for the open pairs was full already one week before the tournament. We couldn’t accept any more entries because of the size of the playing area. The interest of the foreign players was also higher than the past years, 13 foreign teams were playing in the teams’ tournament, and more than half of the field was from different countries in the open pairs’ competition as well.

The opening event of the festival was a mixed pairs tournament. Based on 30 boards Bernadette Argayné Magyar and Gyula Argay achieved the best result. Gyula is a regular player on the Hungarian championships and his wife, Bernadette occasionally plays on these events. The second place was acquired by a junior player, Janka Jalsovszky, and her partner Géza Szappanos, a senior Olympic champion. The third place went for Brigitta Fischer (last year she was the most successful women bridge player in Hungary for the 6^th year consecutively), playing with a regular player of the Hungarian open team, Gábor Winkler.

The second competition was a two-day-long team tournament, where we invited numerous foreign junior teams. The participants played 11×8 boards with Swiss-Danish movement.

The medalist teams are:

1. Galim: Péter Gál – Csaba Czímer – György Kemény – Tamás Szalka
2. Seniors Sweden: Björn Wenneberg – Lars Goldberg – UllaBritt Goldberg – Henrik Wegnelius
3. Dumbovich: Gábor Winkler – Alon Birman – Miklós Dumbovich – Péter Lakatos

The best junior team price went to a team with mixed nationality with Czech and Croatian players. They finished 6^th on the leaderboard surpassing the other 9 junior teams, congratulations to Matea Grgurić – Veronika Dolanská – Barbora Kupková – Kristijan Štefanec.
The players played 52 boards of qualification on the first day of the Open Pairs’ tournament. The 16 best pairs played in the A final the next day, the rest of the field continued competing in the B final. After 30 more boards, the final results in the A final are:

1. Brigitta Fischer – Péter Hodosi (HUN)
2. Csaba Szabó – Gergely Szentandrási (HUN)
3. Błażej Krawczyk – Marcin Szymański (POL)

The best pairs in the B final:

1. Richard Gabriel – Martin Vodicka (SLO)
2. László Budai – Attila Vikor (HUN)
3. Miklós Andrási – János Kardos (HUN)

The best junior pair (Ivan Bilusic – Emanuel Evacic) and the best U16 pair (Kacper Kuflowski – Franciszek Kurlit) also qualified tot he A final, congratulations to all of the prize winners for the good results.

Here is an exciting board from the A final:

The play started with a heart lead, and Ödön Dienes took the trick in his hand with the queen. He led the jack of spades and overtook it with the ace on the dummy. After taking the ace of heart he ruffed the ten of hearts in his hand, while West payed the jack, and East discarded his known king. At this moment the contract was in high danger, because of the king of hearts discard, soon it will be obvious why. Declarer led another high spade and overtook it with the king. Played the high diamonds, ruffed a diamond, and gave the trick to East with the queen of spades. On this very spade West discarded his nine of hearts, which was the only potential entry to his hand to lead the clubs from the right side (that’s why discarding the king and keeping the low heart could have been a very effective play). Declarer let the five of hearts taking the trick, and now Lakatos had to lead a club, letting Dienes taking the last three tricks.

1. Miklós Dumbovich – Gábor Winkler
2. Ödön Dienes – László Harangozó
3. János Gellér – Dániel Tubak

1. Miklós Fris – Gergely Kovács
2. Gyula Bódis – Marcell Surányi
3. Levente Kaderják – László Molnár