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.
Winter Nationals started in Delhi on 7th November.There were widespread protests against the organizers on first playing day. Participants complained of lack of food & water and were unhappy with the lodging arrangements. The play was heldup for about three hours.Though the organizers have pooled in Four Square Sports Gear as sponsors for the event the organization was decidedly poor.
The Jagdish Agarwal Memorial Oudh Bridge Championship would be held in Lucknow from January 14 -17. The event is being accorded national status by the BFI.
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.
We continue on the adjustment described in issue 16 in the law of total tricks.This week's deal is from the book Following the law.
Dealer: North
Vul : None
Lead : -
| S | A 10 | |||||||||||
| H | K J | |||||||||||
| D | J 9 7 3 | |||||||||||
| C | Q J 9 7 5 | |||||||||||
| S | 9 7 6 2 | S | Q J 5 4 | |||||||||
| H | 8 7 6 2 | H | - | |||||||||
| D | Q 10 | D | A K 8 6 4 | |||||||||
| C | A 3 2 | C | K 10 8 6 | |||||||||
| S | K 8 3 | |||||||||||
| H | A Q 10 9 5 4 3 | |||||||||||
| D | 5 2 | |||||||||||
| C | 4 |
Bidding
| East | South | West | North |
Bidding for this deal is not described in the book.
This deal is from 1993 World Championship and has been described in the book Following the Law by Larry Cohen widely acknowledged as Guru of Law of Total Tricks.
This is what Larry writes about this deal in his book.
"...Edgar Kaplan, publisher of the esteemed Bridge World magazine, wrote about this deal from 1993 World Championship. On this deal there are 17 trumps; North-South have nine hearts and East-West have eight Spades. Are there 17 tricks? No. North-South have 10 easy tricks in hearts -- two top spades, a spade ruff in dummy, and seven more heart tricks. It's hard to analyze what happens to East-West in spades. Kaplan wrote "my best guess is down one [in four spades], although there are certainly chances of making it"
"...However, as he continued, he got my blood boiling by writing: "... Only, there were 19 or 20 total tricks. Illegal!" What an insult to the law. He totally ignored adjustments .Of course there were more than seventeen tricks; South had a long running suit! All of South players jumped to four hearts to show their long suit. The East-West "trump-counters should have known that there would be more than 17 tricks. Long suits produce extra tricks. This is not illegal! It is adjusting."
Tough words but largely expected from someone totally devoted to law. Edgar Kaplan unfortunately passed away this year after a long running battle with cancer. He would have understood things more if he could take into account the adjustment that has been mentioned in issue 16.
In this deal there are actually 17 trumps and 19 tricks. The 18th trick is coming due to the long Heart suit and the 19th due to establishable Diamond suit of East.Entirely logical but you see Larry also has not mentioned the reason for 19th trick in his book.
For those of you who posses To Bid Or Not To Bid by Larry Cohen , there is another interesting deal on page 158. Just apply the adjustment explained here and you would get the reason for the extra trick in that deal also.
Following very good bridge sites are available for any bridge enthusiast:
Some other bridge sites are: