Vil Gravis's blog

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Successful New Bridge Year to all readers.

Here is a real life poser, one that occurred at all fifteen clubs taking part in the X-Clubs simultaneous deal. I have set it as a 'double dummy' problem.

Board 2 from Friday 23 November
Dealer E NS Vul

	A62 9754 QJ AQ87
J9743 7632 J532		QT85 KT82 KT95 K
	K AQJ63 A84 T964

Thanks to some input from readers, I can now answer the questions I asked last week:

Board 8 from Thursday 8/11/2018
Dealer W Nil Vul

	7642 J6 AQ8643 6
AKT8 AQ7 T75 QT8		J93 T2 J92 AKJ32
	Q5 K98543 K 9754

Q: If West opens 1C, how do so many EW pairs end up in 3NT and why?

If you look at the West hand

There are pros and cons in opening a weak 1NT as you can see when we look at the results on this board ...

Board 25 from Thursday 18/10/2018
Dealer N EW Vul

	AKQ4 94 KT93 753
96 AJ82 862 A842		J52 KQT7 J7 QJ96
	T873 653 AQ54 KT

Do you play “Michaels” and/or “Unusual No Trump”, and if so, HOW do you play them? When I glanced at the hand records while directing last night, and saw Board 22, I thought: “Wow, there will be some fireworks on this one”. But when I looked at the results this morning, these fireworks turned out to be nothing more than a damp squib.

Board 22 from Thursday 4/10/2018
Dealer E EW Vul

	J64 JT875 97 J54
AQT AQ543 AK762		8752 96 KJ8 QT93
	K93 AKQ432 T62 8