The BBO ACBL Club Bulletin #18

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.

Part 1:

The hand for today is very interesting.
North has a close call whether or not to open the bidding, and the auction should develop very differently according to the choice made.
The hand was played on Saturday, October 31st, in the 10pm game. I will present a few likely auctions, and then the play.
The traveler can be seen here.

(Click the NEXT button to view the presentation)

Part 2:
(Click the NEXT button)

Part 3:
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Part 4:
In this part, we will see how the play should go.
(Click the NEXT button)


Bidding a slam like this one, when an ace is missing but partner has a void in the suit, is never easy. The partnership needs some experience and some useful bidding tools in order to make it happen.
For example, if NS play a form of Blackwood which allows responder to show a void, they would probably bid it.
In my regular partnership, the north hand would respond 5NT instead of 5H. This 5NT bid shows 2 key cards and a useful unknown void (unknown only officially, because in most cases the void will be easy to guess from the auction - for example, here it is fairly obvious that if north is short in any suit, it is Diamonds).
You can read more online about different variations of Blackwood. Also, feel free to email me and ask.


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

Dan Israeli