The BBO ACBL Club Bulletin #19

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:
The first board for today presents an interesting play problem.
The trump distribution is horrible, but the contract can still be made with careful play and a trump coup.

(Click the NEXT button to view the presentation)

The Inverted Minors convention is a very useful one. It lets you establish a forcing situation very fast, and makes finding the right game - 3NT or 5 of a minor or sometimes a slam - much easier. The only problem is that you can no longer make a single raise of partner's minor, and have to bid 3 of the minor instead. This is not a very big problem, however, because in most cases where the auction goes 1 of a minor, pass, 2 of a minor, the opponents will usually come in and you will have to bid up to the 3 level anyway.
Feel free to email me about it if you have questions about it.

Hand 2:
This hand was played on Tuesday, December 2nd, in the 8pm Speedball game .
It is a good example of why it is important to super accept transfers after opening 1NT.
The traveler can be seen here.

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Hand 3:
For today's 3rd hand, I have a double dummy problem for you.


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

Dan Israeli