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.
Some more deals on the adjustment mentioned in the issue 16 would be reported in later issues. This week's deal is on card play.
Dealer: East
Vul : None
Lead : S 6
| S | K 10 9 3 | |||||||||||
| H | Q 10 9 | |||||||||||
| D | A K J 6 3 | |||||||||||
| C | 7 | |||||||||||
| S | 6 | S | A | |||||||||
| H | K 8 6 5 2 | H | 4 3 | |||||||||
| D | Q 10 5 2 | D | 9 8 4 | |||||||||
| C | K 8 3 | C | Q J 10 6 5 4 2 | |||||||||
| S | Q J 9 8 7 4 2 | |||||||||||
| H | A J 7 | |||||||||||
| D | 7 | |||||||||||
| C | A 9 |
Bidding
| East | South | West | North |
| 3 C | 4 S | Pass | 4 NT |
| Pass | 5 S | Pass | 6 S |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
This week's deal is being reported by Tim Bourke, the well known Australian writer. He played this deal on Okbridge, the popular online bridge avenue.
Tim was North on this deal and his partner was John Swanson. A word about him. For those who don't know, John Swanson is a big boy. He is the winner of 1977 Bermuda Bowl with partner Paul Soloway ,the 1998 ACBL player of the year, and teammates Eddie Kantar, Billy Eisenberg , Bob Hamman and Bobby Wolff. John has recently penned a book on inside stories on Bermuda Bowl.
East opened preemptive 3 Clubs and Tim and John reached the excellent contract of 6 S after Tim invoked RKCB and John showed 2 Key cards along with the Queen of Spades.
The lead was 6 of Spades and the play was simple. After East returned a Heart, John went up with Heart Ace and squeezed West in Red suits to bring home his contract.
If you look at the deal there are several routes possible to fulfil this contract. A Heart finnese is possible , the Diamond suit can be set up or the Squeeze can be operated.
Here many combinations are working but in some deals only one work and you have to choose the winning route every now and then to achieve high percentage of success.
John did not finnese Hearts as he felt that after producing Ace Spade East can not have Heart King but why did he go for squeeze ?
Says John "...whether it is better to play a squeeze (as I did) or ruff Diamonds twice. The first play gains if West has the Queen five long;the second play wins when East has the Queen three or four long. Both plays win in the other combinations. I thought it much more likely that West held Queen and thus played the squeeze."
So John abandoned the idea of setting up dummy's Diamonds as he thought that Diamond queen five card may be with West but why then he didn't finnese Diamond Knave ? Would you have finnesed Diamaond Knave or is finnese with a singleton a no-no ?
Following very good bridge sites are available for any bridge enthusiast:
Some other bridge sites are: