All News

Saluting the winners. The Babich Wines New Zealand Wide Pairs took place on the evening of Friday October 30th at 57 clubs all around New Zealand. That was the same number of clubs as in 2019 though there were 26 fewer tables this year. That was... read more here

“Hidden Treasure”.          A fairly straightforward bidding sequence with presumably a fairly strong hand which opened the bidding about to go down in dummy. They need a stop in the suit... read more here

                   Just waiting….   Nearly Positive. Bidding styles continue to change with bidding after a strong Game-Forcing 2 opening no... read more here

Dispensing with the safety barrier. I have no head for heights, or to be exact sheer drops. If I am somewhere high, I like to feel there is a good strong safety barrier between me and the world down below. In bridge terms, my safety barrier, in... read more here

“IF”   So, what do you do when dummy appears which is some two or three tricks short of what you anticipated, or hoped for rendering your contract next to impossible? Thanking partner is of course, the polite thing. No need... read more here

Make them vanish! Ruff Away If you have not got enough top tricks to cash in your suit contract, then using your trumps separately to create extra tricks seems a good way to try to make your contract. When most of your trumps are above the level... read more here

Did you see it? Dallas’ Diamond Double. An interesting double in a recent hand led to an unusual sequence of events in which the other three players were not leave the table without a little piece of egg on their faces. Was the double an... read more here

      Partner. Our trump suit is..? Setting Trumps. The sun is shining today. Partner has made a take-out double of a weak 2 and you have a goodly 18-count including a decent 5 carder in a suit partner is almost certain... read more here

Declare or Defend? We seem to have too much support for our partner’s suit to allow our opponents to play in their major suit game but too much defence to want to sacrifice. Do we bid on and sacrifice or trust our defence will prevail?... read more here

The Wrong Road. This might seem a strange title for an article which we hinted yesterday would come under the overall heading of “You never know your luck”. Yet, both statements are relevant as most declarers, given the opportunity to... read more here

You Never Know your luck. Today and tomorrow, we feature a couple of deals where the defence and declarer can earn themselves a piece of good fortune. That’s right. It does not come on a silver platter but if you do the right thing, you... read more here

Common Mistakes in Bridge taught by Tina McVeigh. Today’s article is a taste of some excellent free videos produced and made available by Tina McVeigh who has run the most successful House of Cards Bridge Club in Christchurch for some... read more here

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Enough Stuff? Are you? Have you? Your partner has used a Michaels bid, quite an aggressive one as it took your partnership to the 3-level opposite what could be a misfitting yarborough in your hand…and you have much more than that. So,... read more here

      A “Cross” Ruffer! A look today at playing a hand where you seem to have very few losers but on the other hand, not that many winners. The answer in many such cases is to make good use of the asset you do... read more here

A Multi Problem. It is pretty certain when an opponent starts with 2and you have the hand below, that they will have a Weak 2 in one of the major suits. You are strong enough to rule out their strong option. Yet, which suit do they have and how... read more here

Where to from here? To bid? If so, what? Or maybe to pass? If we choose to bid, what do we bid? What does partner’s double mean, anyway? Too many questions! Suddenly, a fairly simple hand has become rather less simple to handle. It looks... read more here

Saved from the Brink of Disaster. So, sometimes you make the right lead and it turns out to be an unlucky lead. Sometimes, you make the wrong lead and pay the price. Maybe West on today’s deal deserved the latter fate as the lead made was... read more here

don't stay where you are! The “Strength” of Weak Jumps. We are not talking about Weak Jump Overcalls, though they can be quite useful, too. We are talking about Weak Jumps when your partner opens the bidding. You can play Weak Jumps... read more here

Strong and hard to handle. That’s a reasonable description of today’s hand. Hard to decide where to start and then if you decide on a simple overcall, even harder to know where to go next. Was that overcall right in the first place?... read more here

ONE GOOD PLAY NEGATES ANOTHER. When both the declarer and a defender find a good play on the same board, you might expect each to achieve an average result. That was not quite true in reality.        ... read more here

All over an overtrick..well almost all! Well, you are playing Pairs and as we all know so often to our cost, +140 can be a top and +110 a bottom. So, the battles over an overtrick in a part-score deal can be as meaningful as one’s attempts... read more here

No Time to Fail. We can all go down in our contract when finesses fail and suits break badly. Oh, you hear during the post-mortem how you could have end-played one opponent or squeezed them and be like the computer analysis making an overtrick!... read more here

The new venue for our National Congress is Baypark Arena, Mount Manganui, Tauranga and will be a long term booking. The Trustpower Baypark location is central to all services in Tauranga, effectively ten minutes from Tauranga... read more here

Moving Forward….and “Minties’ Moments”. A board for all tastes, whether you like the difficult problem an opposition bid can cause or some lighter moments that happen frequently at the table. Let’s look:... read more here

(well almost!) Too Low, Jo(e). The title is no attempt at personalising a poor score: hence, the bracketed letter! We are all capable of over and under bidding a particular board! Some hands are, like the problem we gave you yesterday, very hard... read more here

                        Choices? Some bids are easy, come from a beginners’ textbook on the game. At other times, we have a... read more here

Grand’s Over the Horizon. Well, it may be but you would like to get close. While at times we have to acknowledge that pre-empts do work, we would still like to make a decent effort at what is “our hand”. Take the following:... read more here

      DOWN! The feeling you get when you make less tricks than you needed for your contract. It’s also the term to describe your result. As usual, the finesse failed and there seemed no recovery. Did it have to be... read more here

The good and the bad. One of the advantages of a splinter bid (showing a side-suit singleton or void with trump support for your partner) is to identify when the two hands do not match so that you can sign off at the game level. A sign of such... read more here

Taking the Right Lead. Today’s story revolves not just around making the right opening lead but is also a story of bridge ethics, of doing the right thing at the right time. Ironically, the choice of opening lead did not matter greatly as... read more here

                    But you gain! Sacrificed in a Good Cause. You are defending a no-trump contract, a tell-nothing about my suits 1NT opening. There... read more here