Newsletter 14 August 2025
In our newsletter this week...
- President's Message
- Refresher Course
- New Members
- GALA Pairs
- Rookies/Novice Championship
- Upcoming Events
- Results
- A Grand Old Time
- Lighter Moments
President's Message
Teams of 3 Event – A Huge Success!
What brings me joy? Seeing a room full of members laughing, competing, and enjoying the game they’re passionate about! Last Sunday afternoon, the club was alive with excitement as 26 teams joined our much-loved Teams of 3 Event. The energy was infectious, and the spirit of the day unforgettable. Events on this scale don’t just happen, they require an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes organisation, and we’re fortunate to have a fantastic group of people who make it all possible.
A huge thank you to all the Team Captains – your leadership is the backbone of this event.
A special shout-out to our wonderful manager, Elizabeth, for her enormous effort in coordinating the teams and captains. It’s no small task, and it’s deeply appreciated.
Director Bruce Crossman was our hero on the day, managing a mammoth workload with calm professionalism and keeping everything running like clockwork.
Thanks also to our fabulous social guru, Barbara Bialowas, for sourcing the delicious nibbles and prizes, and for assembling a great support team – including Jennifer and Brett Yeats, who assisted with food preparation and clean-up (thank you!).
Finally, to all our wonderful members who participated, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly in appreciation of the captains and organisers’ efforts. Fantastic effort – thank you all!
Beginners Lessons
We’re excited to share that our latest round of Beginner Lessons has started this week running on Wednesday evenings and Friday mornings. If you see new faces around the Club, please be sure to say “hi” and help make them feel welcome. Let’s show them what a great community we have here at the CBC!
We would like to extend a big thank you to Rachel from Travel Associates, who attended most of our sessions over the past week to share information about their generous sponsorship, and delighted everyone with some fantastic lucky door prizes!
- Mary
Refresher Course
Join Barb for 4 short lessons on commonly used conventions, covering:
Stayman, Transfers, Shapely Overcalls and some Slam seeking conventions.
There will be example boards to play and time for lunch before the afternoon play session. This is a walk in event and no partner is required (but ideal if you come with a regular partner).
- Dates: Tuesday 26th August, 2nd September, 9th September, and 16th September
- Time: 10.45 am – 12.00 noon for 4 weeks
- Cost: $10 through myABF
New Members
Canberra Bridge Club welcomes the following new and returning members to our club:
- Stephen Murphy
- Erik Olbrei
GALA ‘GOLD’ Pairs – Saturday 6 September 2025
The Bridge Federation of the ACT is holding a Gala ‘Gold’ Pairs Day on Saturday, 6 September 2025 at the CBC club rooms starting at 9:45 am (note early start time).
Objectives of the Gala day:
1. Provide a one-day butler pairs event where players of BFACT affiliated clubs of all levels will be welcomed and will be competitive. The event will have Open and Restricted categories.
2. Select “ACT 2” and “ACT Provincial” teams for the GNOT. A provincial player is one who is from a provincial club, or has their home club as a provincial club, or has less than 300 Masterpoints in the BFACT region. The GNOT will start with Realbridge matches, please see: “https://abfevents.com.au/events/gnot/2025/” for more details.
Date:
- Saturday 6 September 9:45am
Cost:
$15 for full time students and pension concession card holders
$45 for all others
Entries should be submitted before Friday, 5 September.
Winners of GNOT QUAL events which were played in CBC throughout this year will receive an email inviting to play in the above event for free. To help the organisers it would be appreciated if you've qualified for free entry please reply as soon as possible regarding your intention to participate.
Rookie/Novice Butler Pairs Championship
On the same day as the GALA Pairs, CBC is holding a Rookie/Novice Butler pairs championship for players under 80MP. The winners will be presented with the Beverley Carmichael Trophy.
The event to be conducted as a Swiss match in 2 sessions with a lunch break in between. Members of all affiliated clubs are welcome to attend. Before the first session, there will be short presentation given on how to play Swiss events.
Date:
- Saturday 6 September 9:30am
Cost:
$40 per person
$20 for Youth Players
$30 Concession
Results
The winners of the GNOT Qualifier Gold MP event for Tuesday afternoon are:
- Grade A- JACQUES CHERBUIN /ADAM ROBINSON
- Grade B - KATE WARD / JOYANNE GOUGH
The winners of the Teams of 3 event are:
1- Category B John Kelly - JENNY ARTHUR - BRUCE ARTHUR - MICHELLE WILLIAMS
2- Category C Sue Coleman - AMIK MOAFI - SUZANNE MARDUS - VICKI DEAKIN
3 - Category A Paul Nelson - PENELOPE SHILLING - SUSIE THEARLE - SHANNON CRAFT
The result of the NSW State-Wide Pairs is up on the website below. Congratulations to Chris and Morag Lokan who made the top 53 (though they are listed as Dubbo players).
The final for the 2025 BFACT GNOT KO Teams was played last night, congratulation to the winners below:
- DAVID APPLETON - DAVID WAWN - BRAD COLES - DAVID HOFFMAN - IAN ROBINSON - GEORGE KOZAKOS
A Grand Old Time
Two of our regular players had a game at the Valley Bridge Club last Monday. Reviewing the hands they noticed that there were three hands where the computer printout told them they could make a grand slam. Of course “could” is not the same as “should”. Here are the hands in question. Have a go at bidding them yourself without looking at the answers. How high would you have got?
Hand One (We are vulnerable, they are not):
South Deals and passes and West gets to open the bidding with the following twenty count. North also passes and we can have an uncontested auction. What contract would you and your partner get to?
WEST:
♠AKQ85
♥95
♦AKJ9
♣QJ
EAST:
♠void
♥A6
♦QT6432
♣AKT94
The first question is what to open. Although it can be tempting to open Two Clubs every time you have a lot of points, I tend to favour opening a simple One Spade with this kind of hand. If my partner passes that, we are
probably not going to make game (although sometimes we will). East should then respond Two Diamonds (showing eleven or more points, no fit for spades and at least four diamonds).
West should definitely be thinking about slam at this point and should check that we are not going to lose two tricks off the top via asking for aces (either Four No Trumps, Keycard or Four Diamonds, Minorwood). When we learn that our partner has both Aces and the Queen of Diamonds, it can be tempting to “just” bid Six Diamonds or Six No Trumps. However, this hand is going to have so many tricks, I think it is worth a further push, investigating for Seven. I would advocate bidding Five No Trumps to ask your partner for Kings.
When you find our your partner has the Ace of Hearts, the Ace of Clubs, the Queen of Diamonds and another King, you can (almost) count to thirteen tricks. Remember that your partner does not have a fit for Spades, so the Spades are unlikely to run, but could perhaps be established via ruffing. I think Seven Diamonds is a high percentage bid (it’s only really going to be bad if partner has a 2443 shape.
These hands don’t come up a lot and it’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief and sign off in Six Diamonds. But it’s worth thinking a little bit further. Asking for Kings is often free and if your partner has perfect cards, you may as well bid the hand to its fullest!
Hand Two (They are vulnerable, we are not):
Once more the opponents are silent throughout. West is the Dealer. How would your auction go?
WEST:
♠K73
♥73
♦AQT9
♣A943
EAST:
♠AJT
♥AK64
♦KJ42
♣KT
How to open hands which are four-four in the minors is a matter of style. My preference is to open my stronger minor (if my partner is pressed for a lead, I may as well give a clue as to where my values are). So I would open One Diamond. Holding Nineteen points and hearing your partner open, East should immediately be thinking about slam. Nonetheless, we’re not sure which slam yet, so I would make a simple response of One Heart – when we only open with five card majors it is imperative we respond with our four card majors to make sure we find all of our major fits. West will then respond One No Trump, showing a balanced hand of 12-14 HCPs without four hearts.
Here, I confess that I would raise that directly to Six No Trumps. It turns out this is going to be a struggle (it can be made, but you need to both find the Queen of Spades and work out which squeeze to play!) A much better contract is Six Diamonds.
One convention that might help us to find this superior slam is Checkback. The way that checkback works is that after a No Trump rebid by my partner I can bid either Two Clubs (invitational) or Two Diamonds (game force) as an enquiry, asking the no trump rebidder to describe their hand further. Here they would bid Two Hearts if they had three card support, Two Spades if they had a four card spade suit or (as in this hand) Three Clubs to show a previously unbid club suit. Knowing now that my partner has a 3244 shape (or possibly a 2254 shape) I might recognise that Diamonds will be safer, since I can generate tricks by ruffing two hearts.
In Diamonds, it is possible to make Seven, but that once again involves finding the Queen of Spades. Bidding a slam which requires a finesse feels exciting when it works but is not a winning strategy in the long run!
Hand Three (We are vulnerable, they are not):
West once more gets to open the bidding (and the opponents will pass throughout). What choices would you make here?
WEST:
♠J42
♥53
♦A4
♣AJ9874
EAST:
♠AKQT96
♥AT4
♦KT8
♣Q
The first hurdle is whether or not one should pre-empt with the West cards. I love pre-empting, but this hand has several features which would deter me. First of all, it’s a 6322 shape.
I’ve learned from long, painful experience that weak 6322s just do not play very well. Second of all, I have two aces. When you pre-empt your partner builds up a picture of your hand and it is generally that you don’t have much defence. If I open Three Clubs, my partner is going to expect me to have shape and no defence and here I am with a flattish hand and two quick tricks. If I were to open anything with this hand it would be One Club (!) but Vulnerable against not, I feel this is too much. So I would pass with the West hand.
East will then open the bidding One Spade and West should raise to Three Spades (or make whatever bid you use for an invitational hand with three card spade support). East should now bid Keycard and finding West with both missing Aces will be able to bid Six Spades.
If West does choose to pre-empt with Three Clubs, East should bid Three Spades (a new suit being forcing!) and West should raise to Four. Even opposite a pre-empt I would give Four No Trumps a try, although I would be slightly nervous!
This hand also makes seven, but only because the Clubs break Three-Three (the king is also onside).
Summary:
Taken together, these show the three different ways we can have “good hands”. Hand Three is powerful because of its shape (there are only 28 HCPs between the two hands). Hand Two is powerful because of the preponderance of high cards. Only the first hand has BOTH high cards and shape – the ingredients for a solid grand slam.
If you have any interesting hands that come up (or hands you wish you’d known how to play) we would love to hear about them at:
- Steve Geddes
Lighter Moments
- What makes fat penguins such a hit with their friends? They sure know how to break the ice.
Thanks to our away member Julie Ellis for contributing the joke above. Julie and I met at the Orange congress recently, and she said that she would send me something funny from her local Bathurst West LPO (operated by owner Bally) which regularly displays jokes for waiting customers. Thanks also to Ellen who sent in the lovely hand drawing of a very accurate fat penguin.
Have a great week everyone!
Elizabeth
