Blogs

This is the year of “Evil Twos” and “Evil Acol” for anybody who wants to try something a bit different yet not overly difficult to add to their bidding and play repertoire. Did you notice that this is the year 2022 so Evil Twos is an apt description of our opening two level bids and defence against an opposing 1NT opening, so let’s start there.

The reader should by now be familiar with the basic structure of the weak two openings, and overcalls when an opponent opens 1NT. However, to start this series, I want to make one interesting addition to our defence against a 1NT opening by opponents. Our basic “Evil” structure of bidding over an opposing 1NT is as follows:

• 2C: clubs and hearts
• 2D: diamonds and hearts
• 2H: hearts and spades
• 2S: spades and a minor
• 2NT: both minors
• all 3 level bids natural and 6+ cards
• Double: Essentially Penalty (15+HCP)

This deal comes from Thursday 9/12/2021. Perhaps not surprisingly, the final contract almost always was 4S by East, even though a 5C sacrifice should be found without too much difficulty. That is, if NS play “Truscott” and North uses his or her imagination rather than follows what the book says. Let me show you the deal so you can judge for yourself.

Board 3 Dealer S EW Vul

	Q432 T87532 T92
9863 J85 AKQ6 K4		KQJ542 AT6 J9 Q7
	AT7 K97 4 AJ8653

Thanks for your input. The question, once again:
Match Point session.
Dealer E. EW Vul
You are South

South	West	North	East
1	Pass	1	Pass
?

What's your rebid, holding:

6

AK832

AQ743

AT

There were a number of different views on this one, the main issues being:
a) is a rebid of 2D forcing?
b) is a rebid of 3D GAME forcing?
c) after a response of 1S and then 3NT when opener rebids 2D, what can opener expect from partner's hand?

While lockdown persists and clubs are closed a team of friendly amateur BBO directors began by offering a list of daily 1PM and 7PM sessions open to all NZ players. Interest in the daytime sessions has lately fallen off as clubs return. The week-day sessions (except Friday nights) will be named starting with "NZX Club" and play 14-18 boards of the standard X-Clubs deals with a Swiss draw format when feasible. Friday nights and weekend sessions will be named starting with "NZ Club" and play random boards as no X-Clubs deals are produced for those times. Session results will be reported on this website (Results by Week tab above) and, at around 5:30 and 11PM, will be included in the daily score-across. You'll be able to see how your results stack up in a field of, usually, hundreds of other pairs playing the same hands at clubs around NZ. Click on Read More to .. well .. read more:

Clicking into your name will be part of a larger publication to be made when the final few come through.

The scaling down - or up - is what simultaneous pairs is all about. When club results - say 7 tables - are scored across a much bigger field .. we have 350 tables so far ... they become much more objective. Club results can be "out" by +/-10% over 24 boards when compared with the scored-across result of a larger field. The range, which you can find by clicking on the Difference heading, is currently +9.95 to -9.67 ... both from Thames who had six tables last night. You need about 60 tables before you get results with an average deviation of +/-0.5% when compared to the scored-across result in a really huge field. This is the whole point with X-Clubs - 40% of NZ Clubs are now playing the same boards at the same times in ten different time slots a week. Sometimes we have over 500 pairs competing. When will your club be ready to join in the fun?

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 8:02 AM Name With-held wrote: