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If you want to do well at this game, you need to know how to defend reasonably well. Having a good system of signalling on defence will get you a long way towards that. This board was nearly always played in 4S by East. The bidding could have gone a number of ways but the defence should have gone only one way. Yet, out of nine declarers in 4S, four made five, three made four, and only two were down one, which is as it should be, given what should be a fairly routine defence.

Board 13 from Wednesday 29/07/20
Dealer N All Vul

	983 T65 A9852 Q8
JT75 QJ972 Q3 K3		AKQ42 8 KJT74 64
	6 AK43 6 AJT9752

“Cover Story”, or “The king is dead, long live the ten or nine”. Why do so many players have difficulty with understanding and implementing the teaching of “cover an honour with an honour”? A simple enough suggestion and one that works nine times out of ten and also works when you are wise enough to ignore it the tenth time. This one is about the nine out of ten times that was seemingly ignored by nine out of ten defenders sitting in the North seat.

Board 26 from Monday 20/07/20
Dealer E All Vul

	Q8 8652 A764 K95
K652 AT92 J92 J7		973 K4 Q8 AQ8642
	AJT4 QJ7 KT53 T3

After West opened the bidding, usually with 1D, most Norths ended up playing in 2S, a few in 3S, and not one EW pair that I saw at our Hutt club played in the ‘par’ contract of 3H. From that it seems clear that few, if any, average club players, understand the takeout double or its uses, even if they at times say they play ‘takeout’ or ‘negative’ doubles. There are other important aspects to the following deal as well, but for now .......

Board 19 from Monday 16/03/2020
Dlr S EW Vul

	AQJT97 62 J6 K86
K4 QT83 AQ73 AQ3		532 KJ94 T5 J972
	86 A75 K9842 T54

From Friday, 7 February 2020
Board 2 Dealer E, NS Vul

	A85 AT8 KJT2 QJ2
KJ64 3 Q7 AT9874		Q73 K954 A95 K65
	T92 QJ762 8643 3

Reader's question:
The bidding was:

How is your defensive bidding against a strong, usually Precision, opening 1C? In the following deal it really does not matter, nor does it matter if South opens an Acol 1D. All the EW pairs missed the boat, so let’s see why they did and why they should not have.

Board 6 from Tuesday 4/01/20
Dealer E EW Vul

	K6 KQJ987 J8 T42
QT943 6 AT75 AJ8		J875 T542 Q9765
	A2 A3 KQ96432 K3