Joan McPheat

Joan McPheat has made many significant contributions to bridge in Queensland since she first became involved with directing, administration and playing in the early 1980s. She and Reg Busch (QBA President 1973-1979, 1983-1986 and QBA Life Member) became a formidable directing duo, combining his expertise on regulations, movements, scoring and the Laws with her mainly self-taught computer-programming abilities. This was at a time when computer-bridge-scoring was in its infancy; Bridgemates did not exist; every sub-program required extensive error-discovery and on-the-job testing; and the hardware for data storage and printing was relatively primitive.

And so “Compscore” was born. Of particular importance was the user-friendliness of the software for directors unfamiliar with computers in general and this program in particular. Such matters as scoring errors, arrow-switched and fouled boards, tie-breaking and late adjustments after appeals all needed to be handled simply and efficiently by directors for whom time availability during an event was critical. Many, many years of time and individual effort by Joan (and Reg) went in to refining and adding to the Compscore menu which included:

Club Mitchell, Howell and teams movements;
Swiss pairs and teams;
Multi-session events;
Congress events;
Butler scoring for the Queensland Teams’ Trials; and
Masterpointing

to list just a few.

The Queensland-Wide Pairs has always been popular with most clubs participating with large entries. In the early days, the clubs would hold the event using travelling score cards which would be packaged and posted to Toowoomba into the waiting arms of Ivy Dahler and Enid Busch. They would then sticky-tape the travellers for each board into one continuous strip, each strip being long enough to start at the front steps, wind through the house and finish out in the back yard! Then the arduous task of walking up and down to manually score each board would begin. With Joan’s assistance, a new scoring module was created which allowed the traveller scores from each club to be entered into Compscore, scored, tallied and amalgamated into the final Qld-Wide results listing.

In the mid-1990’s and after a few years of use at club and congress level, Compscore became sufficiently sophisticated to be trialled at the daunting Gold Coast Congress. This was a daring step to take, as the number of entrants in the multi-level pairs events was far beyond anything attempted previously. To complicate matters further, the venue for the GCC at the time was the ANA Hotel – awkwardly taking up all of the 2nd and 4th floors. Joan gathered together a team of scorers who manually entered all of the scores as they were delivered on paper score sheets by volunteer runners. As the data entry for each qualifying section was completed, Joan would move from computer to computer, ready to download the information onto disks. She then uploaded each disk on to her own computer where Compscore could then combine and compile the entire event into one huge set of results. This was a trail-blazing moment in Queensland bridge history and one that required all of Joan’s undoubted courage and tenacity to bring to fruition. All it would have taken would have been one tiny failure of the system at any point to bring the whole congress grinding to a calamitous halt – collapsing like a house of cards – and the responsibility for its success or its failure was Joan’s alone.

History should record this triumphant occasion.

Joan became the QBA State Master-point Secretary in 1990, a role she maintained for a remarkable 25 years. The QBA has always been fortunate to have such competent people in this important position (Reg Busch, Ivy Dahler, Joan McPheat and Peter Busch) each of whom has, without fail, regularly reported to the QBA Council wth the words “All masterpointing is completed and up-to- date”.

Despite the latest developments in technology, Joan’s legacy continues throughout Queensland to this day and it is timely for this to be recognised by awarding her Life Membership.

Richard Ward
July 2019

Eulogy

Joan McPheat – [R.I.P. 11 November 2023]

Good afternoon. It is my pleasure today to reflect on Joan’s contribution to bridge in Queensland through her part in the Queensland Bridge Association. The QBA is the supervising body for bridge clubs in Queensland. President Richard Ward and Secretary Kim Ellaway wanted to be here today but prior commitments made that impossible.

I first met Joan in June 1981 when Reg and Joan were directing the “Honeysuckle Pairs” here on the Sunshine Coast. It was my first bridge congress and the first of a huge number of congress that I would attend under their care. These were pre-computer days for bridge events but the efficiency of Reg and Joan was always second to none. Of course, Reg was making all the crucial rulings and announcements. However, we all knew that it was Joan’s attention to detail in the scoring department that made sure everything went like clockwork, swift and accurate. Throughout Joan’s long association with the game, she was never one to seek the limelight. Her thoroughness and focus would get the job done. That finality was all the accolade that Joan needed.

Joan McPheat has made many significant contributions to bridge in Queensland since she first became involved with directing, administration and playing in the early 1980s. She and Reg Busch became a formidable directing duo, combining his expertise on regulations, movements, scoring and the Laws with her mainly self-taught computer-programming abilities. Joan would lead us from an entirely manual system of scoring through the dawn of the desktop computer era and on to the modern internet-based systems which we enjoy today.

Manual scoring of bridge events was a time-consuming laborious task and prone to errors if not handled carefully. One could easily wait a week to find out the scores at a bridge club! Initially, Joan wrote her bridge scoring software for her own use until she was quite certain there were no errors which would destroy the credibility of what was a like a black box for most bridge players. Of particular importance was the user-friendliness of the software for directors unfamiliar with computers in general and this program in particular. After all, there would be no instant updates or recalls in those days.

Joan was also aware that a rollout could not occur without a massive upskilling of the scorers within clubs. The majority of scorers had never seen a computer. However, there was enormous motivation within the clubs. Manual scoring was something that we could all do without. So it came to pass that Joan finished up doing inservice in the Maroochydore State High School computer laboratory on a Sunday afternoon. With floppy disks, we fired up the computers and watched the chaos unfold! However, where there is a will, there is a way. Slowly but surely, the skills were built and “compscore” was underway. Joan fielded constant phone calls from all over the country. You can imagine the calls :-

“The scoring didn’t work and I don’t know what I did. I scored it again and did the same thing. It didn’t work the second time either!”

For bridge to make the most out of computers, Joan realized that her software would have to more than simply score club sessions. For the clubs, there were two other tasks that were very time-consuming. One task was handicapping. As in golf, having handicap winners was an important motivator for developing players. The challenge was calculating the handicaps using recently achieved results. Manually, this would be done every couple of months. Under compscore, players handicaps changed as every recent result was added in. The second task was masterpointing. For those non-bridge players, masterpoints are like a brownie point system where points are accumulated for players all over Australia. Manually, some poor devil had to go through all of the result sheets every couple of months and total the points for every player in the club. These were then posted to the Australian masterpoint centre where they would be typed into a computer. An enormous task. Joan’s software allowed the masterpoints to be saved to a file on a floppy disc at the press of a button. This was then posted to the Centre and uploaded without typing. A deal changer.

Joan continued to build her suite of programs to carry out an expanded list of tasks, all at a very reasonable price. It was clear that support for bridge was her only goal.

Joan’s software would also handle events much bigger clubs. One popular event is the Queensland-Wide Pairs. Players all over the state play the same hands. Somehow the results from Cairns have to be combined with those from Warwick etc. with 100’s of scores on each deal, the manual task was huge. Joan wrote software to combine the scores from all over the state – a great way to build cohesion in our decentralized state.

In the mid-1990’s and after a few years of use at club and congress level, Compscore became sufficiently sophisticated to be trialled at the daunting Gold Coast Congress, the largest bridge event in the southern hemisphere. This was a daring step to take, as the number of entrants in the multi-level pairs events was far beyond anything attempted previously. To complicate matters further, the venue for the GCC at the time was the ANA Hotel – awkwardly taking up all of the 2nd and 4th floors. Joan gathered together a team of scorers who manually entered all of the scores as they were delivered on paper score sheets by volunteer runners. As the data entry for each qualifying section was completed, Joan would move from computer to computer, ready to download the information onto disks. She then uploaded each disk on to her own computer where Compscore could then combine and compile the entire event into one huge set of results. This was a trail-blazing moment in Queensland bridge history and one that required all of Joan’s undoubted courage and tenacity to bring to fruition. All it would have taken would have been one tiny failure of the system at any point to bring the whole congress grinding to a calamitous halt – collapsing like a house of cards – and the responsibility for its success or its failure was Joan’s alone.

History should record this triumphant occasion.

Joan also organized the mammoth task of dealing the hands for the GCC. Until the 1990’s, there were no dealing machines. All hands had to be dealt manually with great accuracy and thousands of deals would be required. How on earth could this done? Joan had the solution. She was teaching at a prestigious private boarding school. Somehow, Joan got permission for the boarders to deal the hands for pocket money! How did she sell that to the parents?

In 1988, the QBA obtained a grant to run an international bridge event to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary. The world’s greatest players were invited and they turned up! Zia Mahmood, Chip Martel and Philip Alder to name but a few. All of Australia’s top players were there and who was going to run it? Queensland’s very own – Reg and Joan. For me, I was barely out of nappies in bridge and now the top players of the world would have to beat me up at the table! How great is this game? Not only that, I managed to snare an invite to the pre-bridge cocktail party at the venue, the Park Royal Hotel in Alice Street Brisbane. Now, I would be mixing with the stars in a social setting! Once again, Joan was there to keep me grounded. When she heard that I would be attending, she called a spade a spade :-

“Ken, please don’t dress the way you usually dress for bridge!”

Joan became the QBA State Master-point Secretary in 1990, a role she maintained for a remarkable 25 years. Without fail, she regularly reported to the QBA Council with the words “All masterpointing is completed and up-to- date”.

Joan was fastidious about masterpoints and all green points had to be rightfully earned. When one of the Sunshine Coast’s favourite daughters, Adrienne Kelly, was moving to Adelaide, we decided that we had to have a party despite her objections. Having a party at a bridge club is a little frowned upon so there had to be bridge. Joan was there for the sendoff but most of the players were more interested in partying than bridge! After about 14 boards, we abandoned the movement as I set about scoring the dregs. Sure enough, Joan was at my shoulder with helpful advice:-

“Ken, don’t even think about masterpointing this. If you do, I will remove them tomorrow!”

Joan’s long and meritorious contribution to Queensland bridge was recognized when she was elevated to Honorary Life Member of the Queensland Bridge Association.

As time moved on, the DOS platform on which Joan’s programs were based was being replaced by “Windows”. This gave a better user-friendly interface but needed a major rewrite of compscore. Joan was pleased to pass the baton to Reg’s son, Peter. This proved to be a huge success with compscore3 now being the benchmark of computer bridge scoring software.

So, what did Joan do for her goals in retirement?

She turned her hand to supporting learners – Every Wednesday at the Sunshine Coast Contract Bridge Club, she would be there helping new players to gain the skills to enjoy the great game. With Alison Dawson as the primary teacher, she built a great affinity. Joan took them straight from lessons and built their skills in supervised play so that they could take their place in regular sessions. This wearisome endless task was appreciated by the continuous stream of learners.

At the behest of her learners, Joan’s devotion culminated in her receiving a volunteer’s award in the Australia Day Honours in 2014. Joan was also elevated to the very short list of honorary life members of the Sunshine Coast Contract Bridge Club.

Joan, we tip our hat to you and long remember your contribution to the game and so many players!

KEN DAWSON