Newsletter 21 August 2025
In our newsletter this week...
- President's Message
- Message from the Committee
- New Members
- Refresher Course
- Wednesday Night Pizzas
- GALA Pairs
- Rookies/Novice Championship
- Upcoming Events
- Results
- Spoilt for Choice
- Lighter Moments
- Bridge Quiz Competition
President's Message
The CBC would like to extend our very best wishes to our members competing in the 47th World Team Championships in Herning, Denmark, 20-31 August.
Good luck to:
• Jodi Tutty (Women’s Team)
• George Kozakos & Ian Thomson (Seniors Team)
• Sebastian Yuen & Christy Geromboux (Mixed Team)
For those interested, you can follow the results here:
http://db.worldbridge.org/Repository/tourn/herning.25/microSite/Results.htm
Gentle Reminders - For Everyone’s Comfort and Safety:
To ensure an enjoyable experience for all members, please keep the following in mind:
• If you are feeling unwell, we kindly ask that you stay home and rest.
• Please switch off mobile phones before play begins to avoid disruptions to others.
Your consideration and cooperation are greatly appreciated - thank you!
- Mary
Message from the Committee
Would you like to be an active player in helping direct the Club’s future? Why not nominate to join the Committee in 2025-26 and be part of the enthusiastic members dedicated to assisting with the business and activities of the Canberra Bridge Club. Being part of the Committee brings many benefits including getting to know the Club’s members, participating in decisions about the Club and its directions, and bringing a varied expertise to the Committee. Nomination forms can be obtained from the Manager.
SAVE THE DATE - CANBERRA BRIDGE CLUB ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2025
The Canberra Bridge Club will hold its 2025 AGM on 14th October 2025 at 5:30 PM in the Olive Lott Room.
A Notice of AGM will be circulated to members 21 days prior on 23rd September 2025.
Please save the date.
New Members
Canberra Bridge Club welcomes the following new and returning members to our club:
- Colleen Fogarty
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
Wednesday Night Pizzas
The Wednesday night pizzas provide the opportunity for social interaction while enjoying a pizza sampling. It provides a great opportunity to talk to and socialise with your fellow players, which is not always the case when engaged in playing bridge.
o 27th August - 6:30pm
o $5 payable on the day for half a pizza
Those wishing to partake should place their name on a list on the noticeboard or contact Jon Pike directly. His email is
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
Upcoming Events
The next Tuesday night competition is the Egon Larsen Butler Pairs:
- 26 Aug, 02 Sep and 09 Sep at 7:15pm
- Click here to Enter
The last GNOT Qualifier Event for 2025 will run on RealBridge:
- Saturday 23rd August at 1:15pm and Saturday 30th August.
Remember that you will need to play all two weeks with the same partner to qualify for the free entry to the GALA Pairs.
The Australian Bridge Magazine Australia-Wide Open Pairs will run on:
- 27th August - Wednesday evening 7:15pm
- Cost: $15
This is a walk in event to be held during the usual Duplicate Session for Wednesday evening.
Results
The winners of the 2025 ACT Matchpoint Swiss Pairs are:
- DAVID WAWN / DAVID HOFFMAN
Spoilt for Choice
We’ve all had that feeling before. We wend our way through some complicated auction, we’re worried about exactly what dummy we’re going to get; did we push too far, did we not go far enough….? The opponent’s lead, and amidst a flurry of excitement the director is called who turns to you and says those awful words. “You have five choices…..”
They then rattle through lots of confusing options about being dummy, not being dummy, accepting leads, demanding something, prohibiting some things….How does one choose?
Well what are the options? When would we take them.
Option One – Accept the lead and put your hand down as dummy
I would choose this if the lead didn’t look like it would do us damage and if during the auction we had described my hand to defenders whilst leaving my partner’s hand a secret.
Option Two – Accept the lead and play the hand.
I would choose this if the lead looked especially helpful to me and if I thought it would be useful to have my RHO on lead.
Option Three – Reject the lead and demand the suit be led.
I would choose this if I wanted this suit led, but I had some kind of fragile holding (like a single honour or a broken series of honour cards).
Option Four – Reject the lead and prohibit a lead of that suit.
I tend to choose this most often out of all the options. Typically the opponents will be leading “their” suits. If I prohibit that, there is a much better chance they will instead lead one of “my” suits.
Option Five – Reject the lead and allow any lead from the correct hand.
The only real advantage of this choice is that the improperly led card will remain as a penalty card. That means that I’ll get all of these options again as soon as their partner gets on lead. I might choose this if I really had no clue about what kind of dummy I was going to get.
To look at these options in detail, lets consider one hand and one auction and then imagine when we might make each of these choices.
For example, imagine you hold the following:
♠KQT96
♥void
♦KJT98
♣532
Your Right Hand Opponent opened One Heart. You bid Two Hearts as a Michael’s bid showing five-five or better in Spades and a Minor. Your LHO passed and your partner bid Five Clubs (Pass-or-Correct). Your RHO passed and you corrected to Five Diamonds which was passed out.
Option One – Accept the lead and put your hand down as dummy
If my RHO now led the Ace of Hearts out of turn, I would tend to accept this lead and put my hand down as dummy.
There’s not much advantage in keeping my hand hidden (the opponents have already learned most of it anyway) and it doesn’t look to me that the Ace of Hearts is a particularly damaging lead to us. My partner can play the hand and the opponents will be in the dark about what the Five Clubs bid was made on.
Option Two- Accept the lead but play the hand.
Imagine now that we have the same hand and the same auction but that this time our RHO leads the Ace of Spades out of turn. It looks to me that the Spade lead is likely to be helpful. Furthermore, I suspect that their partner may be able to play a club through my Partner’s Club suit, so I’d rather have them on lead for trick two. I would accept this lead but play the hand – there is some value in keeping the strength of my soon to be established Spade suit a secret.
Option Three – Reject the lead and Demand a lead of that suit.
Same hand….same auction….same inattentive RHO. If they instead led the Two of Diamonds I would reject this lead. I don’t want to have to guess which honour to play early. However, I probably want to draw trumps, so I will demand a Diamond Lead from the correct side. The Two will be picked up and doesn’t have to be played to this trick, but I know I will be able to choose from the King, The Jack or a small Diamond once everyone else has made their choice.
Option Four – Reject the lead and Prohibit a lead of that suit.
If their lead out of turn was the Ace of Clubs, I would reject this and prohibit a Club lead. I think there is a good chance my partner has lots of clubs and that this is going to be a weakness for us. By forcing them to lead something else, I may be able to discard a club loser from my hand (or to set up my Spades to discard some Club losers in dummy.
Option Five – Reject the lead and let your LHO lead whatever you like.
I can’t really think of a good card on this hand where I might make this choice. The suits all matter too much to me. Perhaps a small Spade?
The main piece of advice is not to panic. If you don’t understand the consequences of each choice – ask the director. They won’t tell you what to do, but you are entitled to know what you’re choosing between.
Try to make the best choice for your side, but rest assured that nobody REALLY knows what the best answer is. You are not alone in your uncertainty! I regularly go through these rulings even with quite experienced players and still walk away from the table hearing the player in question saying “I had no idea what he was talking about….”
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
- I tried to lie to my x-ray tech about my broken leg but he could see right through me... And then i didnt have a leg to stand on.
"All I did was to go and play bridge, a non contact activity and look what happened!" said Perelle when I rang her early this week, "if you need a fill in player, I can't come." she added.
If you haven't heard yet, one of our members Perelle Scales has managed to break her ankle whilst playing bridge at the Coffs Harbour Congress. The latest update is that she's had surgery and is now doing rehab but is still in Coffs Harbour.
Wishing you a speedy recovery Perelle, in the meanwhile there's a quiz below especially for you.
On a different matter altogether, Nic Finn is looking for some bridge playing travel mates to go on a train trip to Perth aboard the Indian Pacific. If you are interested please email Nicole.
- 🚂 Indian Pacific Bridge Trip July 2026
- Cost is around $3,300 pp
- Looking for like-minded bridge players to join us!
- Contact:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Bridge Quiz Competition
For all those with lots of time or for those away from home and recovering from a broken limb, try getting to the best solution for the following quiz. The first correct answer received by Wednesday to
Have a great week everyone!
Elizabeth
