South Wairarapa Bridge Club

Mindy's presentation this day was on an aspect of Competitive Bidding.  In particular, what to do when your side opens the bidding and the other side Interfers.

The notes are attached below.  The first three pages deal with the responses that Mindy recommends, for the partner of the opening bidder.  There are different responses depending on what type of hand that partner has.

The next two pages are a quiz, and then there are two pages of answers.  Finally, there is a page containing 8 hands where the opponent after the opening bidder will make an overcall or a bid of some sort - and what should happen next, and why. In other words, there are hands, recommended bidding and explainations

We only got to play six of these eight hands.  There were about 22 people present at this seminar. And Mindy will be back for more soon.

Competitive bidding

Todays visit focused on "the play of the hand", and we spent much of the afternoon bidding and playing hands, with various degrees of success.

The notes that Mindy left were based on some material written by an American Teacher of Bridge - Karen Walker.

You can read those notes by clicking to here  Karen Walker's notes on playing the hand

These are excellent notes by the way - well worth reading and studying.

For this visit - Mindy focused on "Team Tactics", playing for IMPS rather than for Match Points.

Here are her notes

Team Tactics

Mindy discussed two topics.

The first was "Trial Bids".  This is a bidding convention to help you decide whether you and your partner should bid to game when they have gone two of a major suit over your 1 level opening. See notes here ...

Trial bids

 Most of us get our first bid pretty much right, but knowing what to do for our 2nd bid can sometimes be a challenge.  Mindy offers some help.

Opener's rebids  

and she went into more details about leads and spent some time on how to use the rule of 11, when you know your partner has lead the 4th highest card from a suit.  Mindy also discussed the rule of 10 and the rule of 12 for people who want to try "Leading 3rds and 5ths"

Leads

This time the focus of the session was on

• Doubles
• Slam Bidding; and
• Defensive signals

The Notes from the afternoon are here  

The Notes from Mindy's 2nd session.

On Feb 25th Mindy Wu spent a Saturday afternoon with nearly 40 members.  Mindy is a Past President of the Wellington Bridge Club, a person who has played at some of our tournaments, and someone who brought fun and energy to her afternoon with us.

She covered 3 topics

1. Opening Leads
2. Weak Twos, and the Ogust Convention
3. How to compete against a 1NT opening bid

Mindy has generously provided her notes, just follow the links below

Leads

Weak twos, including Ogust

Mindy created a lot of interest in the topic of opening leads by doing the following: She got each table to play a series of hands in which normal bidding will get most pairs into a game contract.  We then played the contracts that we had bid.  As it happens, choosing the correct leads in each case will defeat the contract, but most of did not get this right.  You too can think about the hands we played because they are hands 1,2,3,7,9 and 10 on the following hand record.

Hand records

Because of Coronavirus we have postponed Mindy's workshop, due to be held on the 4th April. until later in the year. We will advise a new date later..

Mindy Wu is coming back to the South Wairarapoa Bridge Club in 2020

Her first workshop will be held on the 4th April at St Lukes Hall starting at 1.00. $10.00 per person.

Email - admin@southwairarapabridge.org.nz if you would like to register.

Mindy will be coming three times during 2020