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Newsletter of the Ballina Bridge Club

President’s report The start of our AGM, held on Saturday, 3rd September, was delayed until we reached a quorum of members (72). Thanks to all members who attended, and to those who came in so that the AGM could go ahead.

The Committee changeover was done without the need for elections; my thanks to those MC members who have stayed on. Sue Burns retired after three years as Secretary and previously three years as Assistant Treasurer to Julie Harwood. Thank you, Sue, for your excellent support and service to the club.

Newly-elected 2016 Management Committee (left to right): Judy Woodward, Assistant Secretary; Beverley Peart-Kuter, Secretary; Sue Mason, Committee; Rebecca Rogers (seated) President; Chery McCallum, Committee; Chris McDowell, Vice-President; Judy Forsyth, Chair of Play Committee; Lorraine Bryant, Assistant Treasurer. (Absent: Judy Peiti, Treasurer; Maureen Baker, Committee.)

Our new Secretary is Bev Peart-Kuter who is already immersed in paperwork!

The minutes of the AGM will be uploaded to our website so if you were not able to attend you will shortly be able to read what transpired.

I will be taking a few weeks holiday from September 21, so V-P Chris McDowell will be in the hot seat.

I am looking forward to a fresh year of improvements and enjoyable events to interest and please all members.

— Rebecca Rogers, President

Annual General Meeting issue

— Ballina Bridge Club — Newsletter

September 2016

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Newsletter of the Ballina Bridge Club

Play Committee Report Congratulations to the following players on their success. GNOT Results 1st — Eric Hurley, Janet Brown, Marjorie Askew, Bill Powell 2nd — Judy Forsyth, Judy Woodward, Lyn Arnett, Mike Gilfoyle 3rd — Liz & Howard Jeffery, Eileen & Jack Pierce Somerville Laundry Lomax Shield Winners Jean Lowe & Kay Milne; Eileen & Jack Pierce. David Read Day Teams to represent Ballina on 25th September: Open — Judy Forsyth, John Paynter, Liz & Howard

Jeffery B Grade — Mary Leonard, Henry Hirschhorn,

Jenny Wardley, Vicki Ivosevac C Grade — Beverley Peart-Kuter, Chris Pezzutti, Lorraine

Bryant, Wendy Doyle. Coming Up Your entry asap would be appreciated. UHMP – 15th September ONLY. Charity Day Teams On 3rd October to support Ballina Hospital Auxiliary. Stall for purchase of goods will be available. Harvey Norman Mixed and Restricted Pairs Will be held on Thursdays and Wednesdays for three weeks from 12th October. Prizes will be awarded at our end-of-year function. Details are available on the club Noticeboard. Pre-entry is required for these events.

Lists of Pairs/Teams for an event will now be available on the club website as well as the noticeboard. We hope this will make it easier for players to see who is already ‘Booked Up’. Friendship Day Unfortunately we had to cancel this event because of lack of entries.

From the survey results it would seem most do not wish to play on a Sunday and find an all-day event rather demanding. We shall certainly take this information on board for the 2017 calendar.

— Judy Forsyth Chair of Play ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣

Lesson on bidding to slam Marjorie Askew (centre below, and inset) gave a lesson on ‘Bidding to slam’ on 26 August 2016. These photos give a good representation of the popularity of her instructive lecture. Many thanks, Marjorie.

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Newsletter of the Ballina Bridge Club

SACRIFICE BIDDING is not practised as much at Teams bridge as in Pairs. 500 against 620 is not a huge gain, whereas in Pairs it might gain you a top. If you get it wrong — and the opponents were not making their game — you may have lost the match.

TEAM MORALE —If you are holding poor cards and are looking at lots of minus scores, remember that your team mates will be doing their best for you at the other table with the cards of your immediate opponents. They may have a column of pluses. You are part of a team of four players. Do not give a passing thought to over-tricks: they are only swings of one or two IMPs.

GENERAL TACTICS: The winning approach is to play a careful, steady game, and make fewer mistakes than your opponents. Par bridge will win almost every Teams match. At teams, a 51% game is good enough to win a match. At Match Point pairs, 51% is nowhere near good enough; even 60% might not win a tournament. At Pairs, you must take chances (which means making some bad bids) in order to win.

There is no place in Teams for wild bidding, super sacrificing and guessing. Save the weird bids for Match Point Pairs, and keep to the straight and narrow at Teams. At Pairs you are allowed to make some wild ‘bad’ bids, but at Teams you must play very ‘good’ sensible bridge.

In conclusion, Minor suits are OK, overtricks are unimportant; in defence, simply put the contract down, and remember to bid all vulnerable games.

*‘Set the contract’ means beat the contract. So ‘setting the contract by two tricks’ = ‘beating the contract by two tricks’ — e.g. if opponents bid 4S, you should double only if you are fairly confident that they cannot make more than 2S.

The setting trick is the trick that beats the contract. If they are in 4S, and you are on lead with 3 tricks already, you should cash your Ace of Clubs, not take a risk and try to play for more than one off.

♠ ♥ ♦ ♣

Teams Tactics (IMP Scoring) — By Janet Brown

Our Teams Championship is coming up on 18 September, so this is an appropriate time to refresh memories on the best strategies to employ when playing Teams matches. This article by Janet Brown outlines how and why you should bid and play in teams matches.

TACTICS AT TEAMS (IMP SCORING) Experienced bridge players consider Teams play to be the finest form of bridge. The luck element is considerably reduced, and careful steady play is rewarded.

The NON-VULNERABLE game should be bid with certainty, but do not stretch to bid non-vulnerable games. If you’re not sure, a pass is probably best.

The VULNERABLE game requires less than a 40% chance to be worth bidding, so bid any vulnerable game that looks to have a faint chance of making. You gain 10 IMPs if you bid a game which is not reached at the other table. Look at vulnerability on the board; if you are not certain, go for it — bid it!

Playing for overtricks is essential at Match Point pairs, but unnecessary at Teams. Simply aim to make your contract.

IN DEFENCE your aim is to defeat the contract. If you have the setting trick, make sure you take it. Do not worry about extra tricks.

PENALTY DOUBLES are almost forbidden in the Teams game. The risk involved, set against possible gain, is too high. If you double and beat the contract by one trick, you have turned 50 into 100 (2 IMPs N/V). If they make the contract, you lose many IMPs. Doubles of part scores are particularly dangerous and can cost you a victory if they go wrong. So — seldom double at Teams; if you do, you should set* the contract by two tricks.

MINOR SUITS are very respectable at Teams. There is no need to make rash bids so that the auction ends up in a Major or NT.

SLAMS require a 50–50 chance to be worth bidding. If you are comfortably ahead in the match, do not shoot for a tight slam. If you are the stronger team, do not bid borderline slams. However, if you are behind, or you are playing a much stronger team, then bidding a tight slam may be the way to win the match.

GRAND SLAMS are rarely bid at teams. The loss of a small slam score is too much to risk. If you do bid a grand slam, you must be one-hundred percent certain of success. È

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Newsletter of the Ballina Bridge Club

“Sorry, I’m already in a Team”

Ballina Bridge Club is at 13 North Creek Road, Ballina NSW 2478 (opposite Aldi). Phone (02) 6681 5533

Website: http://www.users.on.net/~bbclub/ Contributions to Michael Kuter: kuteredit@gmail.com

Cover an honour with an honour?

— By Paul Smith Whether to cover or not cover an opponent’s lead of an honour? That is the question.

Consider: Declarer leads the Jack towards the Dummy holding of A Q T 5 3; you have the King and a small one. This is a classic case where you must cover the honour that has been led. If your partner holds 9 8 4 2, then playing your King will eventually set up partner’s Nine; ducking would let Declarer take all five tricks.

But consider the case when dummy holds Q J T 9, and you are sitting over Dummy with K 7 4 2. If you cover any of these honours, then declarer will take all four tricks. If you duck and Declarer holds A x x, then they will take only three tricks: your King will come good.

An improved version of the rule is — Cover the last honour with an honour.

In the first example, declarer leads the Jack and you can see the Ten in dummy. So, the Jack is declarer’s last honour — you should cover it. In the second example, you can see that dummy has four touching honours, so your aim is to cover the last of them. This gives the best result in both cases.

Two more examples:

Hand a): if declarer (N) leads the Jack (as they should) then you need to cover it with your Queen. By so doing you will set up the Ten in partner’s hand. The Jack is the last honour that you could cover.

Hand b): if you cover the Jack then declarer can win, lead towards the Ten and get two tricks. If you duck the Jack, partner’s King will win. If declarer now leads the Ten (the last honour), you should cover with the Queen and promote partner’s Nine to a trick. Declarer gets only one trick.

The difficult part with covering an honour is that you are generally trying to set up tricks in partner’s hand, which you can’t see! At the end of the session you want to hear partner say, “I didn’t have many points today, but I took a lot of tricks with my Nines and Tens. Who needs points?” ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣

a) ♠ J 3 2 b) ♥ J T 3 ♠ T 9 4 ♠ Q 6 5 ♥ K 9 2 ♥ Q 8 7 6 ♠ A K 8 7 ♥ A 5 4

— By Howard Jeffery When various events come up, and the names of the players who have entered are not on the noticeboard, you don’t know who has entered. This matters as you then don’t know who to ask to join your team.

Now a button will be placed below the event notice on the Web homepage so a simple click will display the ‘Entries to Date’ for the event. You can then ask players not listed if they’d like to be in your team – saves a lot of “Sorry, I’m already in a Team”.

Pat Fry gleefully cutting her cake to celebrate her 80th birthday on 31st August. Congratulations and

best wishes, Pat.