All News

Where is the Queen? Find her in the right place and you make your contract. However, if she dares to win a trick, then your contract is doomed!Let's take a look. South DealsN-S Vul ♠ 3 ♥ Q 9... read more here

just one! Jan’s Day: Just a matter of trumps. You are in small slam and have three suits with aces and kings to burn. The fourth suit is the trump suit, the only one that requires any care in order for your slam to succeed. Some days you... read more here

The Teachers Group had added two more topics in the set of Intermediate lessons There are12 - Weak 2 Suiter Openers13 - Splinters and Roman Key Card Blackwood (RKCB) You can click on this link to go to the Intermediate lessons page I wish to... read more here

Ominous Signs. Your partner has shown at least four trumps, a game-forcing hand and a singleton or void in a side-suit where you have a massive unhelpful holding of KQJ75. That sounds bad for slam. So, sign off in our heart game. However, the... read more here

Tough Board. What? They all are! Well, some are just a bit harder than others. Take the decision South already made below. They elected to take whatever they could rather than bidding on to 5S. A controversial decision. Will it be the right one?... read more here

Where did we go Wrong? For Less Experienced Players and others. Today’s deal was sent in by a reader who was part of a bad sequence of bids. It was possible to make all 13 tricks in one suit though bidding and making small slam would have... read more here

Jan Cormack. Fine Defence For Jan’s Day Don’t you sometimes wish that your partner makes a certain lead or switch…and they end up placing a card in your near void suit on the table? If only…if onlys do sometimes happen.... read more here

new tournament: new players performing well. Tournaments are in full flight at the moment with several full or almost full houses. At the end of March Marlborough held its mini Congress, a full weekend of bridge with 5A teams on Saturday and 5A... read more here

no problem if I held these. An Honour too Many? Well, you would not think having such a holding was possible and indeed for a while in an unusual bidding sequence, that was not true. The task today is to unravel the sequence and find the lead... read more here

An Exception to a Rule. That’s one of the things that makes Bridge so interesting. We establish lots of rules and then find situations when we break them! One primary aim in bidding is to find a fit in a major suit and then with the... read more here

“Make it Easy on yourself”. Burt Bacharach may not have been thinking of playing a 6 spade contract when he wrote a song with these words but he might have done! They applied to the following contract. Your partner had taken a plunge... read more here

“Pass” in the “Pass Out” seat? For less experienced and others. Recently, I surveyed a row of +140s for North-South, in 2 hearts making an overtrick almost without exception. East-West were cold to make 3 clubs and there... read more here

Northland's Player of the Year 2020. Greetings all. It’s me again, here from the Winterless North. The last few months have been very busy with tournaments galore and we are seeing more and more visitors to the North attending these... read more here

Jan’s Day: Bold Bidding..and Play to match. Today’s deal features some adventuresome bidding and required some excellent declarer play to bring home the contract. If you are going to “bid them up”, at times you will need... read more here

Give us a Break. A good break, a favourable break. There seems nothing much wrong with the contract and indeed, the computer analysis has a “7” under the spade column indicating you can wrap up all 13 tricks. Yet, this is not some... read more here

Any Regrets? You have opened very light in high card points, with just 9 to be exact. You have good holdings in both major suits and had every intention to play in one of them if your partner drove the partnership to game. Yet, an... read more here

Like a fine cheese, good things take time ! We are pleased to announce that because we no longer have packages, we are able to introduce a proper shopping cart for Congress events on our website.  This reduces the steps for users... read more here

QUICK THINKING NICK. Today’s hand comes from the recent Anzac Teams in Wellington. Winning this event were Peter Newell, Martin Reid, Malcolm Mayer and Michael Ware. Michael, in particular, has had a fabulous few months at the bridge table... read more here

Trump support? Is that all, partner? Minimal Support…for less experienced players and others. There are times in bidding when you have to raise your partner to game with very little support for the intended trump suit, even occasionally... read more here

Jan’s Day. The “Weak” No Trump Overcalls. The two hands below were dealt some 35 years apart. One may not even have been dealt by a dealing machine! The other occurred very recently! Take a look at them and guess what they have... read more here

We know that many of you are wanting to enter the National Congress. We are requesting you to enter all events in advance. Just now, you are unable to do so. We are introducing a changed system for entering and paying for events. This has... read more here

You Failed? Well, your contract did and you seemed to do nothing wrong: just bad luck, perhaps. Occasionally, you get that no matter at what level of bridge ability you play. How “bad” was the luck here? North... read more here

Cracking an old chestnut? Can we? We want to show a long strong suit in a good hand by jumping but that tends to hide our good holding in the other major, responder’s suit. There again, how good is our long suit? Can we solve that problem,... read more here

Remember the Bidding? It can throw up plenty of clues when you later end up as declarer or even with a key decision as a defender. Sometimes the bidding is a guide: on other occasions, it throws up stone-cold certainties. The bidding happened... read more here

  Which bridge player is in this picture and where is it taken? My guess is that you do not know the answer to either question. That is why you will need to read today’s Jan’s Day article to find out the answers.  ... read more here

CHOICES… Restricted ones. I hate the sound of the words, “Restricted Choice”  (did West have to play an honour or choose to?) so much so that even though today’s hand seems to centre on a “Restricted... read more here

        But worth a mention? Bidding with not much. Recently, I played with a first-time partner. We had a chance to have a brief system discussion covering the main areas of bidding and, as usual, about 3.5... read more here

                Egg on One’s Face? Some bidding situations seem easy. Others are a wee bit harder and then there are those which seem much worse! Opposition... read more here

  score.  The Aim is for making Game.. for less experienced players and others Well, you like to make overtricks especially if you are playing Pairs but number one rule whatever version of the game you are playing is to make the... read more here

 Jan Cormack. The “Joys” of Pre-emption. Pre-emptive bids not only describe a particular hand shape very well (that is most people’s pre-empts do!) but they can make the bidding extremely difficult for the opposition: very... read more here

The Killer and the Argument at Tauranga. A nice friendly game is bridge. We are all friends even when the action at the table does not go our way. So, today, we look at the “Killer Lead” and the argument. Well, who would dare pick a... read more here

A Fine Line…. Both between success and failure and also taken by the declarer in the final contract…..which was? Let’s review the bidding to reach that final spot with the Panel today coming down with a vengeance against an... read more here

         The Simple Way? Bidding is simple. Well, it can be. Shall we take the simple line on today’s deal? Shall we simply tell our partner we have support for their suit? If the answer is... read more here

Damned if you do: Damned if you don’t. Covering Honours. For less experienced players and others Is that how you feel when you cover an honour with one of your honours? If you do, you seem to solve declarer’s problem for them and if... read more here

Meet Sonya Adams. You may not have heard of Sonya especially if you do not live in Central Otago. However, she is having a big impact on the Wanaka Club which has just started two Learners sessions at the club with 44 attending, more than double... read more here

Listening and Caring. A title which applies equally to life and to bridge. Clues of how to play a board can often come from the bidding. Take a look at the following and decide how you would play your game contract before reading on.... read more here