Bridge Bulletins

December 9th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

What do you expect when you get a Bridge Bulletin at the NABC, the World Championships or other major events?  What do you think they should contain?  Mark Horton joked recently that one of the last Bulletins at the NABC in Boston was a first in bridge history, it contained no bridge deals at all –  a Bridge Bulletin with no Bridge.  I am sure it is not the first.  This happened because it was ordained that the bulletin be a certain number of pages and it was filled with results, announcements, that sort of thing.

I raise this partly because John Carruthers wrote an editorial in the IBPA December Bulletin, providing constructive criticism of the Bridge Bulletins at the World Championships.  I do not agree with most of his points.  See what you think:

a) the results of the IBPA awards should be announced in the Bulletin.  They normally are but were mostly missed this year.  The winners were disappointed and as sponsor of the IBPA Bridge Book of the year I can tell you that the sponsor were disappointed as well.

b) Lack of explanation of alerts in the bidding.  This is a difficult one.  I think that there are times when it is important to provide information about the meaning of bids but a lot of the time I think it distracts from the narrative.  I know that when I was writing up (in BLOGs) the world championships I did have the convention cards in front of me and made choices about when to give an explanation.  Also I didn’t always know what the bid meant.  The convention cards were not adequate to provide all the information I needed.  Sometimes the BBO announcer asked the players and that helped. 

c) John suggested that “dull matches” not be written up.  I have never watched a match that did not have some points of interest.  Most of the time the round robin matches are on BBO or Swan or in China on ‘Our Bridge” for a reason.  They are picked to showcase a team or teams or because they are in a contention in the round robin.  I think it is a thrill to have your match written up (it was for me) and it is a thrill for your countrymen and friends to have a chance to read it.   As a player I enjoy reading what happened at other tables in matches I played and I don’t find it dull at all.  I know that the Bulletin staff has to pick and chose and they can’t fit everything in and I think they do a fine job right now.

d) John suggests that players watch at the table and report on matches not on BBO.  I can’t see any good reason for this.  It isn’t always easy to follow the action at the table and you can only see one half of the match.  It was a shame that the system wasn’t working which would have allowed journalists and others to see what was happening in all the matches on Swan bridge.  Journalist and others in Shanghai who were onsite could see the entire bidding and play of every match.  So it is possible to write up other matches if there is a good reason to do so.  I would like to have access to these matches mostly for comparisons with the match I am featuring.

e) John suggested that the Bulletin collect hands from bridge players.  Sure, why not.  I would invite players, NPC. journalists and bloggers  to submit interesting hands.

I would add that there was a lot written about the World Championships that was not in the Bulletin.  There were many Blogs.  A lot of them featured on this site.   I know in the next few years that Blogs will play an important rule in providing insight into World Championships and other events.  I think the Bulletin staff should consider how they can use that resource.

Generally I think the Bulletins are quite good and the staff manages to do an amazing amount of work to get them out there each day.  It is hard work with a small team to put out a professional magazine every day.  Yes improvements are possible but I for one think they do a great job.

Now if they would only get more hands into the NABC Bulletins.  Maybe they could reduce the amount of pages used to give results and announcements or just add more pages (I know it costs money).  Just don’t drop the report on appeals – that is one of my favourite parts.

What do you think?

Getting smarter everyday, money bridge and other musings

December 8th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

I have been working on my program of improving my thinking.  I am not measuring anything at the moment – I don’t have a before and after so I won’t really be able to tell.  Anyway I am having some fun.

Part of the program is getting a couple of problems everyday from the ” Head Brain” at www.Braingle.com.

Here was today’s riddle.  You should have no problem with this one.

Title: Six Letters it Contains
Category: Riddle
=======================================================

A word I know,
six letters it contains
subtract just one,
and twelve is what remains.

I am also trying to make sure I do some planned physical exercise every day, a bridge activity and some time on some other game as well.  Right now I am working on memory games and hidden object games.  My daughter suggested memorizing some poetry which sounds like fun.  The later is helping me to develop patience with problems.  Usually if I can’t see the answer right away I just do something.  I am working on that.

One of the things I have been thinking about lately is why don’t people play money bridge much any more.  When I went to visit the only rubber bridge club I know of in Toronto there was only one table of bridge.  Everyone else was playing other games.

What happened to the rubber bridge clubs and the money games of the past?  Does anyone have any thought about this?   I am not really a gambler although in my youth I did play a bit of money bridge from time to time.  I know that everyone thinks that you learn more that way.  I don’t think that but it did create a bit of a different atmosphere.

There are all sorts of poker games online, on TV, in casino.  What is the matter with bridge?   What do you think.

Mark Horton and Liz headed home yesterday after a short visit.  We are looking forward to seeing them in April along with Brent Manley and Donna if she can make it.  Here is a picture Liz sent me of Donna, Ray and I working on a geocache in Boston and looking a bit cold (but having a good time).

A geocache is a hidden box which you find by using a GPS to go to the geographic coordinates provided by the hider.  For more about geocaching go to www.geocaching.com.  I promise you it is a fascinating hobby.

Brain Exercises

December 5th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

While I was on the way to the bridge tournament in Boston I read an article in a Toronto newspaper that I brought along for some entertainment while driving.  It talked about new understanding of the brain and how scientist now understood that your brain works in an analogous way to your muscles.  It grew and developed if you used it. 

Now that made sense since we had bridge people had been claiming for years (with some statistics to back it up) that bridge players were mentally sharper even in old age.  The article claimed that researchers had developed brain exercises that would effectively reverse some or all of the effect of aging on your mental capabilities.

I have been doing a little thinking about how aging affects bridge play and had some discussion with others.  The main things people have said is that they think more slowly and are more likely to forget a convention or an understanding or they can’t remember what exactly what happened on previous tricks.

So if you can use brain exercises to reverse this affect you would have all the advantages of experience and remove these disadvantages.  You might even unlock brain capabilities you never had fully.  This sounded very worthwhile and I planned to research it further.

Last night while I was trying to get caught up on the wacky events with the Canadian government I caught a problem on the Canadian Broadcasting Company which talked about these exercises and how they had helped children with severe learning disabilities, stroke or accident victims and seniors too.  So that sent me off to search the web to see what I could find.  I am determined to try this out and see if it will help me to play better.

The first exercise for bridge players is of course to play bridge.  So I am going to make sure that I play and/or watch for at least 1/2 hour pretty well every day as painful as that will be for me.  Apparently doing two things at once is helpful but I do at least three things at once most of the day so I am not too worried about that side of things.

Bridge players need: memory. concentration, deduction and logical reasoning.  I found a website called www.fitbrains.com.  From their site ….

I am going to spend time on this site (and some others) over the next while and see what I think and report back.  I am also going to do more research on the subject and would be interested in your comments.  The whole thing is hardly a hardship for me since I love to play games of all sorts.

Another area that is important is exercise.  I have slacked off in that area for a bit so now is the time to get started.

I wonder if I will notice an improvement.

What are the five books you would pick

December 5th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

I noticed a topic on Rec.Games.Bridge Newsgroup today that I thought was interesting.  Here is the topic

I noticed that the first answer included this book from Master Point Press:

Human Bridge Errors by Danny Kleinman & Nick Straguzzi.  Congratulations guys, I too found this book interesting.

Some other common choices were:

Right though the pack by Darvas and Adventures in Card Play by Kelsey Otlik.  I loved the former when I first read it.  But I agreed with one of the comments that “maybe I will understand it this time”.  It’s not that the bridge technique is too complicated.  It is I find that the way it is woven into the narrative confuses me.  Well maybe the bridge technique is hard to follow too.  I think it is a bit like Stephen Hawking’s ” A brief History of Time”.  I thought I should read it and I sort of did but I got lost here and there.  Another suggestion Why You Lose At Bridge by Simon is a good book but since I don’t play much rubber bridge any more, it isn’t quite as meaningful as it used to be.  I honestly can’t understand why anyone would pick Love on Squeezes.  There are a lot of better books about squeezes around now.  Love made something that even simple squeezes hard to understand.  I think they must have read it twenty years ago and forgotten how bad it was.

Frank Vine’s  North of the Master Solvers’ Club would make a great Christmas present.  It is so funny.

Besides Danny and Nick’s book noone seems to have mentioned any recent books.  The small list seems to contain books that are at least 20 years old or more.  Someone even included Culbertson’s Red Book (but I think that was a joke).

So what books would you pick?  I am going to think about mine for a while.  I love books, I love bridge.  Hence I love bridge books so it is going to take me a while.  I would say that a complete set of Bridge World would keep me busy for a very long time.

Replying to Bobby Wolff at dinner in Boston

November 30th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

Ray and I went out for dinner with Andy Boyles and Shireen Mohandes from London England and Brent and Donna Manley.   Over a middle Eastern meal a few bridge hands were copied on napkins.  First, a lead problem:

Your hand is

KQxxx KJxx x xxx 

You hear this auction:

North	South
2	3
3	4
4	6
7	all pass

You are on lead playing in a Swiss team game.  I picked my lead very quickly.  Have you picked yours?

I led a club.  My reasoning was that the “obvious” spade lead could never really do anything useful.  North had solid diamonds and the major aces for this bidding.  It sounded like South had very good clubs.  A club lead just might cut declarer off from dummy.  There was some disagreement with that idea since most people thought South would not jump to the diamond slam without three of them and that rendered a club lead useless.  But I did win most of them over.  And it turned out that was the right lead.  Declarer did have a stiff club and dummy had only two diamonds with partner obliging with three trump.  So declarer had his communications cut and could only make 6.  I hope I would have got that at the table.

We then had a go at the famous “Forcing Pass” hand presented by Judy Wolff in her blog

Separating The Men From The Boys

and recently discussed by Bobby Wolff in his blog

From Another Vantage Point

You recall the situation.  Your hand is

x AQ8xx K10xx Axx 

The auction has been

West	North	East	South
	1	3*	3
pass	4	4	?

Now Ray and I had already made our choices on this hand, mine being 5 at imps and a pass probably at matchpoints.  All the bridge players at our dinner table picked 5 at all forms of scoring (with one person picking an aggressive 4NT).  Andy  speaking for the majority echoed my comments.  Partner doesn’t know about my good diamond fit.  I know the suits aren’t splitting and I know that partner may have a weak hand (say a weak notrump).  Nevertheless it is putting too much pressure on partner to pass it to him.  We could even be on for slam and 4 could be a make.

I wonder if 90% of experts in the Master Solver’s Club would really pick a forcing pass.  90% of near experts aren’t picking it. 

One of the things that impressed me about Bobby’s response in From Another Vantage point was his comment that you wouldn’t even make a slam try on this hand in an uncontested auction unless partner showed very good hearts (with a picture bid jump to 4). I agree.  And I understand that I would prefer to play hearts to diamonds at matchpoints. 

But I think in a contested auction there are two differences.  First I can’t play 4.  At this point if I am going to try for a contract our way I want to be in the safest one.  Second, I have much less information in this auction.  Partner can have a range of hands.  True that is an argument for passing and letting partner decide.  But partner does not know about the diamond fit which may be more crucial in his decision than his high cards.

So while I am willing to accept the view of the great players who have chosen a forcing pass, I think that they are is a case for 5 as well and I don’t think it would deserve a zero in the MSC.

What would a Nationals be without appeals

November 29th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  7 Comments 

I hate appeals and I hate appealing.  In fact, it has been a long time since I have been involved in one but then again I don’t play many tournaments these days.  However, I find reading about appeals very interesting.  I ran into David Lindop who had been involved in the Appeal published in today’s Bulletin.  And while the outcome doesn’t seem unreasonable I do see some issues with it.

The way Ray and I like to think about “break in tempo” deals  is to take the hand in question and decide what we would do if there hadn’t been a hesitation and then decide if it would affect our choice.

Here is the hand in question

You, Paul Bethe, are sitting North in the second session of the Blue Ribbon and are vulnerable against not.  Your hand is

J1063  J QJ106 KJ72 

The auction started out this way

Richard Zeckhauser	Paul Bethe	Michael Rosenberg	Kitty Cooper
			1
1NT	?

You decide to double.  I know it’s close but this is matchpoints and +200 is gold.  Michael bid

Richard Zeckhauser	Paul Bethe	Michael Rosenberg	Kitty Cooper
			1
1NT	dbl	2	pass
2	?

2 is a transfer to hearts.  Now the first question comes to my mind.  Are we in a forcing auction and what does Kitty’s pass mean.  If Paul had doubled an opening bid 1NT then this is a forcing auction.  Without discussion I would still think that was true even over the 1NT overcall?  Have you discussed this situation with your partner?  Ray and I admitted we  hadn’t.  We didn’t play the same thing over a 1NT overcall as over a 1NT bid.  For example, in this auction,  2 over the overcall would be weak with clubs but we thought that over double the auction would be the same.  If that’s true than Paul is in a forcing auction.  Now back to Kitty’s pass.  Over 1NT dbl the double of 2 (transfer) is a penalty double of hearts according to their notes.  Therefore passing it shows that she does not have a penalty double.  What should Paul do here? 

Assuming he is not going to sit for a double of 2 should he bid something now?   What does he expect Kitty to do?  She could double which I assume would be cooperative, she could bid 2 or she could bid 3.  In suppose that if I pass and she bids 2 I am better off since I can happily pass that.  So for now I will pass. 

Richard Zeckhauser	Paul Bethe	Michael Rosenberg	Kitty Cooper
			1
1NT	dbl	2	pass
2	pass	pass	dbl
pass	?

What does Kitty’s double mean?  She is forced to bid so it doesn’t show values.  It probably suggests three good hearts since couldn’t double directly and she knows I don’t have good hearts since I also passed.  I would think she probably doesn’t have four spades since she might bid  2 with that (but I suppose you could argue with that conclusion).  I personally would bid 3.  Paul bid 2.  This went 1 down.  Kitty’s hand being

Q97  AQ4 94 A9854 

The problem?  There was a break in tempo before Kitty’s double in the pass out chair.  So was pass a logical alternative for Paul?  The director didn’t think so and in the end the committee didn’t think so.  But that does assume that the agreement for 1NT doubled applied to an overcall of 1NT and a double.  Ray thinks that pass is a logical alternative anyway although he wouldn’t have pass, given the agreements. 

David and I chatted about this one for a while and we both agreed we should talk to our partners about what our agreements were over an overcall of 1NT doubled and probably about all the meaning of bids over a 1NT overcall.

David Lindop

It was fun to visit with David who is a big Obama fan and we did try to solve some of  the problems of the world during David’s sitout. 

Boston at last!

November 29th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Ray and I have arrived at the Boston Nationals on Thanksgiving Thursday, about the same time as many people have left.  Mostly we came at the end of the tournament (instead of the beginning) to pick up Mark Horton and his significant other, Liz, who are coming to our house for a visit.  Despite our late arrival there is always some excitement to be had whenever you arrive at a Nationals.  We grabbed a Daily Bulletin before heading to our room.  There on the cover was John Carruthers (the scourge of senior events and others) who had just won the Senioe Knockout as part of the Milner team with P.O. Sutherlin, Matt Granovetter, Fred Chang, Reese Milner and Sam Lev.  Congratulations to all.

On Page 3 was an article by Mark called “This could get to be a Habert” about a hand Rhoda Habert (my former team-mate) played while defending 7S.   Rhoda was great but Mark, your analysis was at best confusing.  So here is the hand starring Rhoda with my thoughts about it.

East was dealer with East-West vulnerable and Rhoda was sitting South.  Her side passed throughout.

5H was exclusion Blackwood.  and South showed two keycards with the spade queen.  6D was a grandslam try which South accepted.

Rhoda held:

What would you lead?  A spade lead is certainly safe.  The opponents must have the top three spades and you know the suit is breaking.  This is the normal lead against a grand slam, one that cannot be criticized.  But Rhoda chose a different path.  Let’s examine her choices.  Partner doesn’t have a club ruff or she would have doubled 7S (in fact she probably can’t trump anything).  It is hard to imagine any case where a heart lead is correct although declarer will not play you for underleading the ace!  Rhoda led a diamond.  She knew that North had the DA from the diamond cue bid and she knew that she had a surprise in clubs.  The DQ was not relevant.  Declarer would win the DA, no matter who held the DQ, and expect clubs to run.  So Rhoda lead the D8.  This is the whole deal.

I am a simple player.  In a grand slam my heart beats a bit faster and even if sometimes I am lazy, in a grand slam I count my winners (or losers if you like).  On this hand I have six spade tricks, a diamond and five clubs if the suit is not 5-1.  A heart ruff will bring me to 13 tricks.  If I had to guess I would place Rhoda with the DK.  Why?  Why else would she  lead a diamond?  Mary Paul once told me that if you are missing the QJ of trumps and the opening lead is the trump J the opening leader always has the Q.  People always lead the jack from that holding with the hope with the hope that they may eventually score the Q.  The unsupported Jack is such an unattractive lead.  I think the diamond lead here is somewhat analogous.  It would be even more likely if North had bid diamonds strongly.  But I digress.

The normal way to play the hand is to ruff one round of hearts and then draw trumps.  The play might go spade to hand, ruff a heart, cash the SQ and return to your hand with the CK.  Now a careful declarer will not just claim but will run the trumps first arriving at this ending:

You lead the last spade planning to throw a diamond from dummy if the DK doesn’t appear.

If clubs are breaking then you are home but if clubs are 5-1 and the hand with the long clubs has the HA then that hand is squeezed.  Also if Rhoda has the DK and the long clubs she will be squeezed even if she doesn’t hold the heart ace.  As it turns out Rhoda (who has everything) will be squeezed on the previous trick.   Forced to hold on to the DK and the HA she will have have to throw a club at trick 7.

At Rhoda’s table declarer won the DA and for some unfathomable reason tried to cash two clubs.  I can only deduce that despite being in a grand slam she failed to count her tricks.  For if two rounds of clubs cashed she had thirteen tricks anyway and if they didn’t, having a club ruffed at trick three is an embarrassing way to go down in a grand slam.  I like to wait until a later opportunity myself.  I have no idea what she was planning to do after cashing the clubs (other than claim perhaps?)

In the article, Mark says that on a passive lead declarer ruffs a heart and runs all the trumps and squeezes West in three suits.  Yes, that is true.  But this works after the diamond lead too, Mark.  As does a club-heart squeeze on either hand.  The play of the hand isn’t really affected by the lead, other than to plant the  idea that West is  more likely to hold the DK.

Good job Rhoda for finding this innovative lead and thanks, Mark,for writing the story in the Daily Bulletin.  I enjoyed it.

Learning by playing with Kathy

November 25th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Today I played with Kathy and then we had a long chat about the hands.   We only played fourteen hands but there was so much to talk about.  I realized how much more you learn when you play then you do in the bidding room.  And best of all we had a lot of fun. 

Katie certainly held her own during the session.  We came up with four major points.

Play

1. Count your losers (in a trump contract) and make a plan.  I showed her how to count losers using the same method as the one in Barbara Seagram’s Winning Bridge (going suit by suit and “borrowing” high cards from dummy).  Most experienced players know how to count losers but I know they don’t always stop and make a plan. 

2. Trying to take a finesse by playing an unsupported queen towards the ace doesn’t work, barring a defensive error.  I have seen this frequently with beginners.  Is it because it is similar to this situation

AX

opposite

QJ

I don’t know.  I know it is obvious to me, but I know it is not obvious to them and I really don’t know how to explain it better than to show them why it doesn’t work.

Defence

3. Holding up winners in notrump to reduce communications is often a good idea.  This is such a complex subject that the only way I can think of to boil it down to a rule of thumb is duck unless there is a reason not to when you know that you hold the top honour in a suit declarer needs to establish.

I think I was I was a bit “mealy mouth” with Kathie but saying “consider” ducking which is a pretty useless way to put it.

Bidding

4. Don’t make a direct takeout double without the right shape (support for the unbid suits) or extra strength.  We all do this for a variety of reasons but this type of action is likely to backfire. 

Sitting with Sally

November 25th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Sally who is learning bridge with help from us and her mom, the Magnificent Maggie, asked me today about defending.  “What do I need to think about on defence?”

I decided the easiest way to show her was to watch a couple of hands together on BBO.  The very first deal we watched was very interesting.  It was one of those battles between declarer and defender where you are not sure who will win.  It also featured some very good defence.  Here is the deal, first from the defender viewpoint.

Sitting West your hand (vulnerable against not) is

There are two passes in front of you and you hear 1♥ on your right.  Sally and I discuss what to bid.  I suggest 1NT since you have a more or less balanced hand with stoppers and the right point range.  (Yes, in Mastering Bridge we tell you not to bid notrump with two doubletons but in real life….)

West does bid 1NT and North doubles.  South runs like a bunny to 2♥ and all pass.  Sally and I agree that the ♣K is an attractive lead and in fact our West does too.

Dummy arrives with

Well he had his double but apparently his partner opened a bit light and didn’t want to sit for it.  Declarer plays the ♣2 and partner the ♣3.  Can you tell what partner and declarer have I ask Sally?  I point out that declarer probably has at least two clubs or he wouldn’t have ducked and Sally points out that partner has an odd number of clubs either one or three, likely three.  From the bidding partner can’t have more than four or five HCP and the most likely high cards are the ♠A or the ◊K.

Declarer leads the ♥J from dummy and Sally and West ducks.  Now we talk about the themes in this hand.  There are themes in declarer play and themes in defence.  Here there are two themes for the defence.  Forcing declarer to use up his trump and making communication difficult for declarer, that is trying to keep declarer from getting back to his hand easily.  He needs to be in his hand to play spades and draw trump.

It is for the latter reason that West ducks.  I find this a bit hard to explain well.  But I can point out that it doesn’t hurt to duck the heart and it might help.  Declarer continues hearts and partner follows again.  Now we know that declarer has five hearts to our four.  If we can get him to trump a few times he may lose control of the hand.  This is a hard concept to explain but Sally is about to see it work in action.

West returns a club to work on eventually setting up his club winners and declarer wins the ♣J throwing a spade (we shall return to this point).

Declarer plays the ◊Q from dummy and now we need to deduce who has the ◊K.  It seems likely that partner would have covered the ◊Q with the ◊K so we can place that card with declarer and give partner the ♠A.  We have pretty well placed all the high cards.

West ducks the ◊Q.  Now that Sally has seen the value of the duck of the heart she can see why it might be a good idea to duck the diamond too, although it is hard to duck the doubleton ◊A at the table.

Declarer pretty well has to continue diamonds and West wins the ◊A.  Now West smells blood.  He continues with the  ♣Q and declarer is doOmed.  Here is the whole hand

As you can see that when partner gets in on the ♠A he can play a high diamond.  Declarer can ruff but West will throw away his spade and declarer will never be able to make his spade winner.  If declarer draws trump, it is worse since partner will have high diamonds to cash.

The forcing game works.  But there is a way to make the hand even on this very good defence.  It isn’t obvious and I suspect not many would find it at the table.  Let’s go back to the point when West returned the third club after winning the  ♥ A.  I think this play is very pretty but I am afraid I can’t do it justice for Sally.  Here is the position:

Declarer has to discard a diamond.  Why?  When he discards a diamond he is able to keep control of the diamond suit so declarer can draw trump and when West eventually gets in on the ♠A declarer will still be in control of the diamond suit.  South only needs one spade winner to make eight tricks, so as long as East has the ♠A (pretty well marking West with the ♠Q) he will be safe.  If trump break 4-2 as it appears and West has the ♠A and at least four clubs South can’t make the hand (from this position) anyway.

By the way, the affect of cashing the ♣A before playing the second heart from dummy is interesting.  It wins on most lies of the cards, I think.

But this is a lot more than Sally and I can get into.  We both sit back a while and admire the beauty of a bridge deal.

More conventions

November 24th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

At Kathie’s lesson last week I decided to add just one more convention, Jacoby 2NT, to show a game forcing major suit raise.  There really isn’t any good way to show this type of hand if you are using a raise to three of the major to show a limit raise.  I don’t like the idea of just bidding a new suit first.  What do you do if partner opens 1♥  and you hand looks something like this:

Fortunately Kathie has a copy of Conventions You Should Know, so she could read about it before the lesson.  We had a happy time bidding major suit hands after that but I got so excited at how well Kathie is bidding that I have to admit I did one little thing I hadn’t planned… well one bid thing.

I discussed cue bids.  We did agree to the following rules for now,

• We are only using cue bids with Jacoby 2NT. 
• A cue bid shows either an ace or a king a singleton or a void in the suit bid. 
• We make the cheapest cue bid available. 
• A cue bid shows extra values.

Do you think it was wrong to talk about cuebids just now.  It was just that after Jacoby 2NT you might want to make a slam try and I don’t know how else to do it.  What do other bids mean after 1♠ – 2NT-3♠ otherwise?

Kathie took to cue bids like a Canadian to Miami.  After this we went back and practised 1NT auctions, which did need a little review. 

So now Kathie and I are going to the big time.  I know we have a lot more bidding to do but I think it is time for a game.  So we are going to go to the BIL room on Tuesday at 1PM.  It is a chance to discuss real hands, with competitive bidding, play and defence.