Newsletter 30 October 2025

In our newsletter this week...

President's Message
New Members
Melbourne Cup Day at CBC
Online Lessons
Upcoming Events
Results
Are We Sure That’s Optimal?
Lighter Moments

🎃 President’s Message 🎃

A big thank you to Terri Henderson for once again bringing her creativity and enthusiasm to our Halloween Bridge Night. Terri has turned this into a much-loved annual tradition, filling the club with laughter, fun, and a touch of spooky spirit! The effort she puts into organising the night, from the decorations to the festive atmosphere, is truly appreciated by everyone who comes along.

Special thanks also go to Suz Wilkinson, Jade Wilkinson and Suzanne Samarcq for their hard work setting up and packing up, and to both Maxwell Ashurst and Josh Schwartz who took on the coordination role to support Terri. Thanks also to Director John as “Master of Halloween Ceremonies”, and to everyone who pitched in behind the scenes to make the night such a success.

It’s wonderful to see our Wednesday evening players embracing the Halloween theme, sharing delicious food (thanks to everyone who brought along some spooky treats!), and enjoying a great night of bridge together. 👻🧙‍♀️

- Mary

New Members

Canberra Bridge Club welcomes the following new and returning members to our club:

Esther Ruberl

🎩🐎Melbourne Cup Day at the Canberra Bridge Club! 🍓🥂

4th November 1pm-5pm (please note the late finish time)

Tuesday 4th November 2025 is Melbourne Cup Day, and we’ll be celebrating in style at the 1:00pm bridge session!

Join us for champagne, strawberries, sweepstakes, and a whole lot of fun as we mark “The Race that Stops a Nation”.

Here's what to expect:

$5 and $2 sweeps on arrival - bring some small change and try your luck!
Bubbly, juice and light nibbles provided by the Club.
Race viewing during the session - Director Steve will schedule a break so we can all raise a glass and enjoy the big moment together.
Dress to impress (or just for fun) - there will be a prize for the best hat or fascinator announced at the end of play.

Mark your calendar: Tuesday 4th November, 1:00 pm.
Let’s make it a day to remember - full of laughter, luck, and lively bridge!

Online Lessons

Will Jenner-O'Shea is running online lessons suitable for all club players most weeks starting at 9:30am.

You can attend the Zoom live, or receive the recording, notes, and replayable hands afterwards.

Upcoming Events

The next Tuesda night competition is the State Open Butler Pairs running for 3 weeks starting on 18th November.

Click here to Enter

Results

In the ongoing RealBridge Club Teams Knockout competition, the following CBC teams have made it to the finals! Congratulations and best of luck when you play in November.

CBC's U100 team - Karen Renfrey, Gary Renfrey, James Walcott and John Lee
CBC's U300 team - Bricet Klören, Craig Becconsall, Debra Birkby and Paul Birkby (subs Deb Milner and Andrew Kettle)

Are We Sure That’s Optimal?

At the recent Spring National Open Teams (current titleholder for best acronym ever) I played with William Jenner-O’Shea and we added a new bidding gadget into our system for the first time – Optimal Spade.

Optimal Spade is a set of agreements that kick in when we open One of a Minor and the Opponents overcall specifically One Heart. Traditionally, bidding one Spade as responder shows five spades and doubling shows four spades, but this leaves a gap of those hands which want to make a takeout double but which don’t have four spades. Optimal Spade addresses this by utilising the following meanings after the auction has begun One Minor (by your partner) and One Heart (by the next opponent):

Double means “I have four or five spades”
Two Spades means “I have six or more spades and an invitation hand”
Two Hearts means “I have six or more spades and either a weak or strong hand”
One Spade means “I want to take some action, and I have less than four Spades”! This is essentially “takeout”.

Obviously that last one can be easy to forget and I spent most of the nine days stressing that I was going to muck this up. When it did come up on the last day, it became clear to me that I didn’t really understand this new bit of system. I held the following hand:

♠ AK62
♥ JT9
♦ KQ3
♣ 742

I opened One Club (William and I have pretty loose agreements about which minor we open, but when it looks like it won’t matter we tend to open One Club, since we have some extra bidding agreements we can use over a One Club opening which don’t apply over a One Diamond opening). My Left Hand Opponent overcalled One Heart and William bid One Spade – which I proudly alerted! Finally! An auction where I know what’s going on. My Right Hand Opponent raised to Two Hearts and it was my turn to bid.

Obviously, pass is the correct bid on my hand, but I’ve always been something of an optimist. I figured that if William had a “takeout” bid of One Spade, he must have both minors (since they’ve bid and agreed hearts and I have three, plus he has less than four spades). I’m not sure which minor is right, so I chose the cheaper one and bid Three Clubs – a free bid at the three level with a flat minimum….hardly textbook but I figured we had science on our side.

This was passed out and William leaned forward to explain the auction to the opponents – usually a moment of trepidation for me as I find out what I’ve forgotten. In this case, he described everything as expected but when they asked more about the One Spade bid he explained that it didn’t necessarily have both minors and listed a 3262 hand with Six to Nine points as one of his possible hand shapes! Whoops… I might be about to play Seven-Four-Two opposite Five-Three as my trump suit….

Luckily, they led a Heart and dummy came down as follows:

♠ 98
♥ 76
♦ J8764
♣ AKQ8

They cashed two hearts and if they now continue the suit I am potentially in a little bit of trouble. However, they both thought I had five clubs, so luckily they switched (unfortunately for them it was to Diamonds, which established my Diamond suit, since they broke Three-Two.

I proceeded to draw trumps in three rounds (they broke Two-Two), cashed the two top spades and ruffed a spade back to dummy, winning the rest of the tricks with my diamonds and taking the famous Seven of Diamonds at trick thirteen as the Beer Card.

Lesson learned – when you add a new bit of bidding cleverness to your system, make sure you learn ALL of it! I was lucky to not be playing at the three level with half the points in a Three-Two fit!

This hand does set a new record for me however. Seven-Four-Two is now officially the weakest hand I have ever voluntarily opened and then freely rebid in a competitive auction.

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: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

- Steve Geddes