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.
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 brushes forcing pass situations.
Dealer: West
Vul : EW
Lead : S 4
| S | A Q 9 8 7 3 | |||||||||||
| H | A K J 4 | |||||||||||
| D | K | |||||||||||
| C | 3 2 | |||||||||||
| S | J 6 2 | S | - | |||||||||
| H | Q 10 8 5 | H | 6 | |||||||||
| D | A 7 3 | D | Q J 10 9 8 5 | |||||||||
| C | A Q 4 | C | 10 9 8 7 6 5 | |||||||||
| S | K 10 5 4 | |||||||||||
| H | 9 7 3 2 | |||||||||||
| D | 6 4 2 | |||||||||||
| C | K J |
Bidding
| West | North | East | South |
| 1 D | Double | Pass | 1 S |
| Pass | 4 S | 5 C | X |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
This deal is also a good example of 30 points pack.Here East is playing 5 Club doubled contract.
West opens 1 Diamond which is doubled by North and East passes! On South's 1 Spade North bids 4 Spades and East comes in with 5 Club which is doubled by South.
East West have 16 HCP between them and both 6 CLub or 6 Diamond is making.
Distribution of East cards is such that EW would not find difficulty in reaching game but can they bid slam ?
North South give a penalty of 500 with 6 Spade bid.So the idea is to bid slam somehow without showing the pattern of East hand thereby inducing double of any EW contract rather than allow NS to come into auction at 5 or 6 level.
East's pass of 1 Diamond double is a very good bid. It shows diamond tolerance without revealing card pattern.When East comes in with 5 Clubs, it could show 5-5 in minors giving a choice to West to play in either Club and Diamond. 5 Club is doubled by South to show at least one trick and an intention to penalize East as they are vulnerable.East has not been able to bid slam but has managed to not allow NS to come into auction at 5 level.
As the cards lie there is no trick available for South in Club suit and with 6610 pattern of East 12 tricks can not be stopped.
So should South not double this bidding pattern ? What if East has 5-5 pattern ?
How would you bid these cards to reach 6 without intervention from NS at six level ?
Following very good bridge sites are available for any bridge enthusiast:
Some other bridge sites are: