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%.

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.

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.

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.

his 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.

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.