Results and Winners Bidders Challenge 2023-7

The Top Bidders for Set 2023-7

This was another high-scoring set. The average score was 50.62 and selecting the most popular choice of competition entrants on every deal would have scored 64/80. Having had our first perfect 80/80 scores of the year last month, we get three more this month. What’s more, one of this month’s joint winners, Barry Bragin, produced a remarkable second consecutive perfect set.

This month’s joint winners, matching David Bird's panel-topping perfect 80/80 score, are:

Barry Bragin (bbragin) from Ft Pierce FL, USA,
Ronald Mak (maktruck) from Portsmouth NH, USA, and
Hema Adhikary (ha53) from Berlin, Germany

Barry says, “The strongest part of my bridge game is being able to predict how experts will handle tough bidding problems.” He has previously been a panelist on The Bridge World’s ‘Master Solvers Club’ panel due to high overall finishes in their bidding contest.

Ron is 73 years old and he has been playing for almost 50 years. He teaches at the Great Bay DBC in Portsmouth NH every Lundi, where they average 20 tables playing F2F bridge. Ron says, “I am free to play with all visitors. On BBO, I can be found on average 4 hours a day, except Mondays.”

Hema is a member of German Team-Bundesliga. Last year the team finished in the top three at the 52^nd International Wachau Bridge Week and in both the Teams and Mini Teams at the Mautern event in Austria.

Also on the Juillet 'Roll of Honor’:

With a score of 79/80

Daniel Mytelka (dsm87) from USA,
John Newman (shiftyman) from Australia,
Leandro Ronderos (dosxtres) from Spain,
Sid Ismail (newmoon) from South Africa, and
Paul Dolphin (pdolphin) from U.K.

On what has proven to be a high-scoring set, you need a score of 73/80 or more to make the leader-board this month. Congratulations to everyone who makes the list.

The 2023 Annual Competition

After seven months, we still have a remarkable 14 players who are averaging 70/80 or higher.

Strangely, on a very high-scoring set this month, only four of those 14 made it onto the monthly leader-board – Dave and Milko (both with 77/80) and Bob and Vincent (with 73/80 each). That means that Dave remains in third place, but closes the gap on the brothers ahead of him, and Vincent moves up into fourth spot. Michael moves ahead of Ian to become the leading Canadian whilst both Milko and Alexander, last year’s winner, move up into the Top 10.

Experience suggests that the leaders should not get too comfortable. We have seen in previous years how quickly quite large gaps can close when players start dropping their weakest scores towards the end of the year.

You currently need an average score of 60/80 or more to make the annual competition leader-board. Congratulations to everyone who makes the list, which represents around the top 120 bidders from amongst the multiple thousands who take part every month.