Michael Neels

Committee Member, Sitemaster, oft-time Chief Cook and/or General Factotum.

Michael has had, and continues to have, a long and distinguished career in Bridge circles. In 1976 he was a founding member of the Fairlie Bridge Club and followed that by writing a regular Bridge column for the Timaru Herald between 1982 -1986.

After moving to Cambridge, he filtered up the ranks to become president of the Cambridge club in 2002-2003. In 2011 he was awarded Life Membership in acknowledgement of his excellent work and his personal responsibility for the many changes and  innovations; which we appreciate and which are an enhancement to the way things are done at the club

In 2008 he was a member of the winning Waikato Bay Intermediate IP team.

In 2011 Michael came up with the idea of X-Clubs. Bob Fearn provided extra functionality to Compass, enabling it to score across the same deals being played at clubs up and down the country, Michael now runs X-Clubs on a day-to-day basis, supported by a team called X-People. X-clubs is now used to score the Babich NZ Wide Simultaneous Pairs.

Upon going irrevocably Open graded in 2013, he made a ten-year plan to achieve the rank of Grand Master. Eight years down the track he is nearly there. We wish him luck and thank him for his devotion to the game!.

Also in 2013 he was handsomely supported by the club members in his innovative concept of The Sixes. Again Bob Fearn extended Compass to scoring three simultaneous Swiss Pairs events and combining up the results across Open, Intermediate, and Junior sections. While there are prizes for placings in each grade, the major awards are made to the top six teams which are comprised of two from each grade. This event has gone from strength to strength and is now housed in the magnificent Sir Don Rowlands Centre at Lake Karapiro.

Michael has built websites for Cambridge, X-Clubs, Te Aroha /Matamata / Morrinsville, Hamilton, Waikato Bays, Thames, Putaruru / Tokoroa, Mount Maunganui, Paraparaumu,New Plymouth and Waikanae as well as giving to support to these and other sites.

In  2016 he and partner John Kelly won the National Open Restricted Pairs.

Since becoming a man of no apparent means Michael, as Club Director and go-to guy for Compass scoring in New Zealand,  has devoted much of his time to giving assistance with Bridge concepts such as Compass scoring, Bridgemates, computers and websites as well as helping with running and scoring of Bridge sessions and tournaments. 

In 2019 he and Bob Fearn worked very hard to make Cambridge the first bridge club in New Zealand to adopt the revolutionary system of Hello Club. This basically means that members pay their table money and subscriptions on-line using an app similar to Toll Roads NZ. Compass knows who attended each session and hits their Hello Club accounts up for the table money. Very little cash at all appears at our club these days.