Greetings from Robert — Daily Hand
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When we declare in a notrump contract, we need to produce winners. We begin by counting our immediate winners, cards like Aces and Ace-Kings, that can be used to take a sure trick. We then turn our focus to how we can develop other cards into winners, called potential winners. The traditional methods for developing winners are Promotion, Length, and Finesse. These techniques are not certain to produce winners, but they give us a chance of producing additional tricks if lucky things happen for us. Here we look at each of these methods in detail to help us understand our options and determine when to make use of the different trick development techniques.
9/2024 (62 min)
Here we review some fundamentals of opening bids and look more deeply into your thought process before we open the bidding. Then we pivot to the responder’s actions and make sure that we are prepared to construct a good auction with some problem situations.
Jan 2026 - Coming Soon!
When partner opens the bidding with 1-Major then we normally go slow and make a low level response. But we can also use some immediate jumps to high bids to describe some interesting and difficult hands. Let’s look at the meaning of this high-level jump responses.
Jan 2026 - Coming Soon!
Here we look at some other complex auctions and special responses to 1-level opening bids. We focus on some jump shift responses to 1-Major and 1-minor and then turn out focus to NT responses to minor suit openings.
Jan 2026 - Coming Soon!
When Responder makes a jump shift, either a weak jump shift or a 3/1 invitational jump shift, then Opener is left to figure out what to do next. Here we look at what types of hands Opener should bid with (like) and when they should be conservative and Pass.
Jan 2026 - Coming Soon!
There are some classic auctions that lead to confusion between partnerships. Ones that you should make sure you and partner agree upon.
Lyford Cay Club, The Bahamas
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Transfers are an extremely useful tool for competitive bidding. So are relay bids, like the way we use 2NT in a Lebensohl auction. We can play a useful system, like Transfer Lebensohl, in a variety of different situations. Let’s see how we can use these methods after partner opens the bidding and the opponents take away our bidding space with a Weak Jump Overcall.
Lesson 1 of 8 (25 min)
Video of Robert further discussing the topics in TWiB Lesson #329.
Robert and Michael discussion building a Vertically Integrated Youth Bridge Program (bridge for all types of players), and Other Education Foundation (ACBL) Goals at the Real Bridge / BAMSA bridge teachers & coaches conference.
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