The BBO ACBL Club Bulletin #17

By Dan Israeli (ACBL_17)

Welcome to this week's ACBL Club Bulletin.
Every week I will bring a few interesting hands played in our very own ACBL games, and try to show you how the hand should be bid and played. Of course, Bridge is not an exact science, so I will try to bring more than one angle. I hope you will find this interesting and useful.

If you come across an interesting hand you'd like to share and have analyzed, or if you have an interesting story to tell or a question to ask, feel free to email me.
My email address is ehhehh@gmail.com.

A few preliminary notes:

1. I try to keep the bidding simple. The Basic Sayc system is used, but mostly it is common sense bridge, added with a few simple gadgets.

2. Some boards will require a more scientific approach, but nothing really major. I believe good bridge can be played without 200 pages of agreements.

Hand 1:
This hand was sent to be my Ken Eichenbaum. It was played on Wednesday, October 28th, in the 9pm Speedball game. Thanks Ken!.
The hand is a nice example of when doubling the opponents is a bad idea, because it will help declarer's play. It is also a test for good declarer play.
The traveler can be seen here.

(Click the NEXT button to view the presentation)

Conclusion: be careful when doubling with marginal hands. The double here is especially bad because dummy might come down with QTx of trumps and the "assured" two trump tricks might turn out to be worth only one trick.

Hand 2:
This hand was played on Saturday, October 24th, in the 6pm Speedball game .
The traveler can be seen here.

(Click the NEXT button)


That's it for today.
I hope you had a good time.
See you next week!

Dan Israeli