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. 250 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.
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.
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 13th Worldwide Simultaneous Pairs event , which in the past have been sponsored by EPSON and Alcatel, took place on June 5 & 6 1998. The event didn't take place in India for the first time since the inception of the event.According to WBF (World Bridge Federation) the BFI (Bridge Federation of India) decided not to participate in this year's event despite having the knowledge of the event three months in advance.
Modipon Bridge tournament is taking place at Inter-continental Hotel Delhi from 6-9 August.The total prize money is Rs 307,000. The top teams of the country are expected to take part.
In this section I would cover one good deal which appeared in the Weekly Bridge Tournaments at Lucknow or in a recent tournament with explainations.
This week's deal is tests primarily bidding and also card play skills.
Dealer: East
Vul : Both
lead : C A
| S | 6 | |||||||||||
| H | A 10 8 4 3 | |||||||||||
| D | A Q 10 9 8 2 | |||||||||||
| C | 4 | |||||||||||
| S | J 9 7 5 4 | S | K 2 | |||||||||
| H | 9 | H | Q 7 | |||||||||
| D | 7 3 | D | K J 6 5 4 | |||||||||
| C | A 10 8 3 2 | C | K J 9 5 | |||||||||
| S | A Q 10 8 3 | |||||||||||
| H | K J 6 5 2 | |||||||||||
| D | - | |||||||||||
| C | Q 7 6 |
Bidding
| East | South | West | North |
| Pass | 1 S | Pass | 2 D |
| Pass | 2 H | Pass | 4 C |
| Pass | 4 H | Pass | 4 NT |
| Pass | 5 H | Pass | 6 H |
| Pass | Pass | Pass |
Consider this deal where South is playing 6 Hearts.
6 hearts is the optimum contract to play but is difficult to reach. Here, North used the Culbertson asking bid of 4C to reach 6H, South's response of 4 hearts denies any control in clubs and when South shows two Aces on Blackwood North has no difficulty in bidding 6 hearts placing diamond void with South.
If 5 card diamond suit with King and 4 card suit with spade King is with West this contract would not make but otherwise also the card play requires a little tact.
But first let us look at the ways to reach 6 hearts. If east opens the bidding with 1 diamond or weak 1 NT the task is much more simple as all the remaining points can be placed on one side and even a spade finesse can be contemplated to be correct. This deal was played in the local pairs event and all but two pairs played this deal in 4 hearts making six or seven.1 S -2 D -2 H would be common to any bidding sequence except for the players whose style is Canape who might respond 2 hearts to 1 spades. Rest of the bidding depends upon what type of enquiry bid is played. Cue bids would also suffice to reach 6 hearts. 1 S -2 D -2 H -5 H also communicates the cards very well , a huge hearts fit with good diamond suit. Some may not use any enquiry and could bid six just on distributional strength though it is very difficult for only 22 hcp are there between North-South. Culbertson asking bids are outdated now a days but aren't they effective in such deals ?
The card play involves making good either North or South's cards. If South's cards are made good then spade finesse is a prerequisite otherwise diamond suit of North can be made good by taking ruffing finesse. What would you prefer ?
Following very good bridge sites are available for any bridge enthusiast:
Some other bridge sites are: