Bridge Club Herkules

by Peter Ventura

With only seven members (!) you can say BC Herkules is doing quite well here in this Champions Cup. Well, the members aren’t just ordinary average players. From the list of members these four players are present here: PO Sundelin, Johan Sylvan, Peter Bertheau and Fredrik Nyström. The other three players are also all Swedish top-players: Sven-Ake Bjerregard, Tommy Gullberg and Magnus Magnusson.

BC Herkules has no long history, but on the other hand a very interresting. The club is only little more than five years old and it was created mainly for one purpose: to enter the Swedish national League. In Sweden everyone is treated very equally so even though BC Hercules without any doubts was a team for the first division they had to start in the very lowest division, the fourth! When they, with some difficulties, managed to advance up to the third division they marched on to the top without any serious troubles. It took the team three years to reach the highest division, but finally there they won the first division as well. And as you know, the champion is qualified to play here...

A second purpose for the club is to offer coaching and training for Swedish players, but surprisingly few seems to need the support so far...

The club-members are searching for one more member, when seven is not the optimal number of players if you want to play team matches. There is in fact another reason to find an eighth member; The Swedish Bridge Federation will assumable in late October decide to only accept clubs with no less than eight members.
In the beginning the club had a sponsor but not for the last two or three years. The players therefore have to rely on their excellent bridge to win large amounts of money prizes to finance all expenses. After the solid performance here in Rome we’ll not be surprised if a sponsor shows up in a near future.