Newsletter 12 March 2026
In our newsletter this week...
- Upcoming Beginners Lessons
- Understanding Defence – The Hardest Part of the Game
- Our New Chairs
- New Players
- Graded Butler Pairs Saturday inc ANC Country Team Selection
- March 8 Mini Bridge Hand
- Results
- Upcoming Events
- Wednesday Night Pizzas
- Online Lesson with Will
- One Step Forward Two Steps Back?
- Bungendore Bridge Club
Upcoming Beginners Lessons
Question: Do you know the best form of advertising our bridge classes for beginners?
Answer: Via word of mouth. So share your love of the game with your kids, neighbours, friends, baristas, colleagues, person next to you on the light rail and let them know that the next round of Beginners Classes starts in April.
Understanding Defence – The Hardest Part of the Game
A series of workshops for the developing player
This is a practical series of workshops focussing on defending accurately. It will cover some of the well known defence aphorisms such as “Third Player Plays High”, “Always Return Your Partner’s Suit” and focus on why they are valuable and when you should ignore them!
As an experiment, we are offering these classes at our usual day time but also trialling an evening opportunity for players unavailable during the day. The Monday and Tuesday classes are repeats.
- Where is it: Canberra Bridge Club – Evening or Morning classes
- When is it:
• Monday Evenings – 6:45 pm until 9:00 pm
on 23rd, 30th March and 6th, 13th April
OR
• Tuesday Mornings – 9:45 am until 12:00 pm
on 24th, 31st March and 7th, 14th April - How much does it cost: $15 per lesson
- Who is giving it: Steve Geddes
This is a walk in event, no need to register. You can come as an individual or as a partnership. All lessons are on defence but even if you miss one, you can still attend the rest.
Further enquiries please contact:
Our New Chairs
You may have noticed the Club has recently invested in 140 new chairs for the Barry Turner room. They look very smart and we hope they will keep our members comfortable for many years.
The Committee has just one small request: the chairs work best when used in the traditional manner - sitting on them. Leaning back on the chair backs while standing and chatting can put a lot of pressure on the plastic and may shorten their lifespan.
With a little care from everyone, we hope these chairs will last the Club for many years. Thank you for helping us look after the Club’s equipment.
- Mary
New Players
Canberra Bridge Club welcomes the following new and returning players:
- Bettye Pearce
- Margaret Pickford
- Jillian Gordon
Go On – You Know You Want To!
On Saturday the 18th April 2026, the Canberra Bridge Club will be running its second all day, red-point event of the year. The last one in February attracted Thirty Three tables and was a great day of bridge. If you missed out (or if you had a fantastic time in February) please set aside the date and enter in our next event.
The purpose of this event is two-fold. First is to select the ACT Regional Team (under 300 Masterpoints) for the upcoming Australian Country Club Teams Championship in July (6th -8th). Each year the ANC travels from one capital to another and this is Canberra’s turn in this eight year cycle. If both members of your pair have less than 300 Masterpoints and if you are interested in representing the ACT during the ANC during the week from Monday 6th July through to Friday the 10th July, please consider nominating.
Even if you are not interested in nominating to represent the State, we will be running a side event alongside the Team selection. This will be a graded pairs, very similar to the event we ran in February. Pairs will play seven rounds in what is known as a Swiss Movement. The beauty of a Swiss movement is that all the pairs are ranked based on their performance during the day. The current top two pairs then play each other, third and fourth play each other, etcetera….all the way down to last versus second to last.
The field will also be graded – likely into A, B and C grades with a possible additional category for current supervised players, subject to numbers. The exact subdivisions will be decided closer to the time, based on entries.
Each round the draw is redone based on current rankings, so as the day progresses you will progressively play against pairs who are doing about as well as you are. If you are doing well, you will be playing your rivals. If you are doing poorly, you can commiserate with others who are also taking all the wrong finesses.
This event will be a great chance to try a new way of playing bridge. Scoring at the club is usually done via what is known as Matchpoint scoring (where all the results on a board are ranked from top to bottom. The best pair scoring 100% and the worst performing pair scoring 0%). The Saturday special events are scored using IMPs – in IMPs scoring your ranking is not as important as the magnitude by which you beat the other pairs sitting your direction. So Games and Slams are far more valuable and overticks are far less.
Many consider it a more pure form of bridge and it offers a novel excuse when you do score badly. Rather than blaming yourself or your partner, you get to mutter the well known bridge refrain “We were screwed by the datums!”
The day will run from 9-45 and should finish around 5-15. There will be a one hour break for lunch which participants will need to organise themselves. Drinks and nibbles will be provided at the end of play for the announcement of winners.
The cost for the day is two regular sessions (so $24 for full members, $20 for concessional members and $30 for non-members). Register now through the link below, you will not be charged for registration, the director will be charging your myABF account on the day of the event.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to speak to Elizabeth, Steve or Jodi or any of the directors. Although there is no guarantee, if you want to play but don’t have a partner we will do our best to find someone you will enjoy the day with.
Graded Butler Pairs Saturday inc ANC Country Team Selection - Details:
- Where: CBC
- When: Saturday 18 April from 9:45 to 5:15pm
- Director: Steve Geddes
- Cost: $24 for full members, $20 for concessional members and $30 for non-members
- Click here to register - you will be charged on the day of the event, registration is free
SUNDAY MARCH 8 MINI BRIDGE HAND
Youth trials were to be held on Sunday March 8 along side the Senior’s Trials. With three contending pairs entered, the trials weren't necessary. Instead, the pairs had a three hour training session with Will Jenner O’Shea and Max Ashurst.
I took my son along and invited his friend who is learning to play bridge. We played the hands according to Mini-Bridge rules. Mini-Bridge is a great way to get beginner players started. It removes the bidding with these rules:
- The pair with the highest point count plays the contract. The person in that pair with the most points is declarer. They decide the contract suit. 21-24 points is played in 1NT or 2 of a suit, 25 - 32 is played at game level, 33+ is played as a small slam.
Mini-Bridge allows players to learn about card play and avoids crazy contracts from poor bidding.
In this hand where N is declarer, we learnt about playing high cards in your short suit to avoid blocking the suit. Declarer (my son’s friend) chose 6NT and we counted 12 top tricks but they have to be careful with the play.
West led 8D, QD, 3D then KD!!!
I let him take back the King after pointing out that he’s played a winner on a winner and a small diamonds was played instead.
He then played 4 spades, followed by AK clubs and J when the queen dropped (pitching a small diamond). Not realizing that the 7C was good, he turned his attention to hearts by playing the KH. And now the heart suit is blocked because when he plays 3H he has to take it with QH in dummy.
After ace and king of Diamonds he shrugs and plays the 7D which wins because East pitched a diamond! What an amusing way to win your first beer card 🍻
- Suz Wilkinson
Results
The trials for the Australian Open bridge team were held at CBC in February.
One of our members David Appleton ran 2nd in the event with his partner from SA, Phil Markey. As part of the Australian Open Team they can now play in the Asia Cup in Goa, India and/or the World Bridge Series in Katowice, Poland.
CBC and BFACT congratulates the following top three pairs who are now invited to join the ACT team at the ANC in the Seniors Category:
- MICHAEL SMART / DAVID HUDSON
- ROB HURST / DESMOND MANDERSON
- RICHARD BRIGHTLING / CHRISTOPHER QUAIL
Upcoming Events
The next Tuesday night competition is the BFACT State Open Butler Pairs on 24th March - 7th April 2026 at 7:15pm:
The BFACT State Open Swiss Matchpoint Pairs (incl BFACT Mixed Pairs Champ) which was previously scheduled to run from April 14 to 28 has been updated to conclude on the 21st April . This change was due to the Autumn Nationals in Adelaide redusheduling their programme.
On 28th April we will NOT be holding a Tuesday night competition.
A reminder also that this event will also be the first Tuesday night competition which will now be starting early at 7:00pm.
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.
- 25th March - 6:30pm
- $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
Online Lesson with Will
Will is running regular Online Lessons that are suitable for Club players of all levels.
There is a LIVE ZOOM on Thursday Mornings at 9:30am, or you can sign up for the lessons and receive the Recording, Hands, Notes, and a way to Replay the hands later. The full list of lessons and topics can be found on our website.
Next lesson is on "Checkback Part 1 - Simple Checkback". Purchase through the link below.
One Step Forward Two Steps Back?
Few topics cause more consternation amongst developing/intermediate players than reverses. People’s confusion and nervousness around this topic leads many such players to declare “Oh, I don’t do reverses”. Well, I have news for you – everyone reverses. It’s just that some people reverse with the wrong hands.
To understand, consider what a reverse is. The bridge textbooks say things like “A bid at the two level by opener of a suit which is of a higher rank than their opening suit”. What it means is that if we open One Diamond, for example, and our partner responds One Spade, bidding Two Hearts would be reverse (since Hearts are ranked higher than Diamonds) but bidding Two Clubs would not be (since Diamonds outrank Clubs). A reverse shows Five or more of the Opening suit and four or more of the Second bid suit.
Crucially, we should only reverse if we have seventeen or more points (or a good sixteen). So let’s consider the following hands. Imagine we open One Club and our partner responds One Spade. We don’t have a fit for Spades, so we won’t raise Spades, we don’t have a balanced hand, so we won’t rebid No Trumps. Should we bid our second suit?
Doing so would be a reverse we would be showing a suit (Hearts) that is higher ranked than our opened suit (Clubs) at the two-level. Accordingly, only the third hand qualifies as strong enough to reverse. With the first or second hands we would need to just rebid Two Clubs. Bidding Two Hearts (as we would do with the third hand) shows that we are five-four in the two suits AND that we have a good hand.
Remember that usually, when we offer our partner a choice of suits and she has a very weak hand she will default to our first bid suit. If we reverse with only twelve, thirteen or fourteen points then we may well hear Three Clubs back from our partner with no great fit and only six points of her own. Bidding to the three level with less than half the points and no great fit is a recipe for a bad score!
With the strength of the third hand, we are safe proceeding to Three Clubs, since even if our partner has no real fit or interest in game, we have considerably more than half the high card points between us. It can also spur our partner on to bid game (perhaps in Three No Trumps) with as few as nine or even a good eight High Card Points.
Consider the following hands. You have opened One Diamond and your partner has responded One Spade. What would you bid next (answers at the end)?
HAND ONE
♠9
♥AK2
♦KQT62
♣J962
HAND TWO
♠5
♥QJ84
♦AKQ84
♣KQ3
HAND THREE
♠7542
♥AKJ2
♦KQJ42
♣void
HAND FOUR
♠T63
♥AK72
♦QJT72
♣Q
HAND FIVE
♠T6
♥QJ3
♦AJT64
♣KQ9
HAND SIX
♠K
♥AKT5
♦J754
♣JT73
Answers:
HAND ONE: Two Clubs. No problem here we can bid out our shape – partner will know we have five Diamonds and four Clubs. We haven’t reversed, so we haven’t shown anything more than an unbalanced hand and twelve or more points.
HAND TWO: Two Hearts. Here we are reversing. We have bid a new suit (Hearts) which is ranked higher than our opening suit (Diamonds). We can only do this if we have a strong hand. Our partner will know two things – we have five or more Diamonds, four or more Hearts and seventeen points.
HAND THREE: Four Spades! Don’t forget to show a fit. Here we have fourteen High Card Points, but when our partner shows Spades and we have a fit we can add an extra five for our void. Nineteen points plus the six our partner has promised means we have enough points for game.
HAND FOUR: Two Diamonds. It can be tempting to show our great Heart suit but remember – we will also be showing a good hand! With a bare minimum opening, we need to just bid our first suit. If our partner has a good hand she can continue bidding and we can bid our Hearts later. If our partner has a weak hand, we probably want to stop as soon as possible.
HAND FIVE: One No Trump. A trick hand. Nothing to do with reverses – when you have a balanced hand and haven’t found a fit, show your partner your balanced hand as soon as you can. This shows twelve to fourteen High Card Points, a balanced hand and three Spades or fewer.
HAND SIX: Two Clubs. I don’t like this hand, triple-four-ones are always awful but I’m not going to reverse without sufficient points. If my partner’s got a weak hand everything is going to be awful and we just want to stop.
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
Bungendore Bridge Club
Bungendore is the newest club in our BFACT bridge community and their President, Angela McGill, has asked me to pass on her thanks to Canberra Bridge Club for a most enjoyable game last Friday afternoon.
They would love to return the favour. Bungendore play on Saturday mornings from 10am and on Wednesday evenings from 7pm at the School of Arts in Gibraltar Street, Bungendore. Any players who happen to be in area are very welcome to drop in for a friendly game. In addition, Bungendore also host a purely social bridge group in the Wamboin Church Hall on Monday afternoons from 1pm. This is a very informal group and they would also love to meet new players. For further information, please feel free to contact Angela on 0408-409-989.
- Wendy Boxall BFACT President
Have a great week everyone !
Elizabeth
