Lucknow Bridge Association conducts bridge regular bridge tournaments in Lucknow.There are two regular pair events every week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.On Tuesday matchpoint pair event takes place and on Friday IMP pair event takes place. The entry fee is nominal Rs. 15 per person or Rs. 30 per pair for members. All bridge enthusiast all welcome. The membership of Lucknow Bridge Association is nominal Rs. 350 per annum and all regular players are expected to become members of the association. The venue for these tournaments is Oudh Gymkhana The address is: Oudh Gymkhana,Kaiserbagh, Lucknow.The timings are 6:30 pm onwards in the evening.
Lucknow club where the event used to take place earlier has closed down. Lucknow club was an old building which couldn't sustain the rains this year and the roof of its Badminton court, which was adjacent to the lobby where bridge used to take place, fell. Oudh Gymakhana charges Rs. 2000/- per month for making its hall available for bridge, part of which is being paid by raising the entry fee and by increasing the annual subscription.
A convention card editor fills, edits and prints convention cards on computer. Lee Edwards of Lawrenceville, Georgia, USA has designed this very convenient convention card editor for various convention cards. The convention cards which can be filled by this editor are ACBL, SAYC, WBF, WBF(England), EBU, BBL, French, Dutch, Belgian, Sweedish, Italian, Austrian, Ireland, Israeli, Indian & Australian. You can download this software which is freeware from the link mentioned above. Those of you who want to send your comments to Lee Edwards can do so at ledwards@bellsouth.net
For Indian bridge players,lovers & enthusiasts the good news is that the convention card designed by Bridge Federation of India (BFI) appears on this convention card editor. So for those of you who have computers the convention card filling in India is a lot more easier job now.
Lee has been constantly updating the software. The latest version he informs is 6.0.1 with enhanced printing features.The software now supports 21 formats and the convention cards of Germany and South Africa are in offing.
In this section I would cover tournaments happening in India and more so the tournaments happening in Northern part of India and in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The 1998 World Bridge Championship just concluded at Lille, France. Indian performance wasn't up to the mark. Only one Indian team ,Poddar, qualified to the round of 64 in Rosenblum Cup.Similarly only one Indian Pair of Alok Sadhu and Vinay Sharma made it to the finals of Open Pairs event. Poddar team was knocked out in the round of 64 and the lone Indian pair finished 58th.One must say that pair event was very gruelling with only 10% of the 700 odd participants making it to the finals. However we must have higher achieving standards, lauding 58th rank would lead us nowhere. Jaggy Shivdasani pairing with C. Goldberg of US finished best amongst the Indian finalist in the mixed pairs event. It is very sad that there were no Indian participant in the junior event.This year's winners were from Italy ,Angelini in open team and in mixed pairs, and from Poland in open pairs though Michel Rosenberg of USA won $35000 for winning the PAR event.One feels happy at the performance of Larry Cohen who finished runners up in the open pairs alongwith David Berkowitz for his excellent book on law of total tricks has enhanced the bridge pleasure for many.
The UP State Championship is being held at Lucknow from October 23-25.The winner of duplicate event of this championship gets HINDALCO sponsorship for Winter Nationals.Winter Nationals are being held at Delhi from November 7th.
In this section I would cover one good deal which appeared in the Weekly Bridge Tournaments at Lucknow or in a recent tournament with explanations.
This week's deal is on preempts.
Dealer: East
Vul : None
Lead : D 8
| S | - | |||||||||||
| H | Q J 10 9 | |||||||||||
| D | A Q 7 5 | |||||||||||
| C | K 10 8 5 2 | |||||||||||
| S | A J 10 4 | S | K Q 9 8 7 6 5 3 2 | |||||||||
| H | 7 6 5 4 | H | K | |||||||||
| D | 8 | D | 9 3 2 | |||||||||
| C | A J 4 3 | C | - | |||||||||
| S | - | |||||||||||
| H | A 8 3 2 | |||||||||||
| D | K J 10 6 4 | |||||||||||
| C | Q 9 7 6 |
Bidding
| East | South | West | North |
| 4 S | Pass | Pass | 4 NT |
| Pass | 5 D | 5 S | Pass |
| Pass | 6 C | Pass | Pass |
| X | Pass | Pass | Pass |
South is playing 6 Clubs doubled and you must be feeling why the hell East West haven't bid 6 Spades ?
Says East when asked this question after the contract was made , a preempter never preempts again.
Those who don't analyse much go by such dictums but in these types of deals pay heavily.
6 Clubs is a well bid contract. Andrew Robson , the well known British player, talks of power of 30 Points pack. When you don't have all the ten points in one suit , bidding for you is done in 30 points. Usually for a game you need 25 HCP but in 30 point pack usually the requirement is much less. Here North South have bid slam in just 22 points in 3 suits only.
Life would have been difficult for North had West tried 4 NT or raised 4 Spade to 5 Spade and it would have been better if South comes into auction immediately after East preempts with 4 Spade.
Usually preempts are two types of bids. One pure preempt without any defensive values and other with some outside defense. Those who play only one preempt bid ,as in the case, must learn to differentiate and not merely follow the dictum stated above.
East in the deal doesn't have any dfensive values , if West had two sure tricks he would have doubled the contract. So instead of doubling 6 Clubs East would do well to bid 6 Spade.
Do you use 30 point pack concept in your bidding ?
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