This is another short update to give you the chance to join the events that are happening this week. The Monday seminar tomorrow (9.30am to 11.30am) is a follow up to last week’s session. It is what to when your partner opens 1 No Trump and your opponents intervene, with either a double, a suit overcall or the Landy convention (showing both majors). This is a very common situation and one which can produce very different results if you are not prepared with some basic techniques. You can sign up by following the payment buttons int he sidebar of this and other pages.

The same goes for Tuesday morning’s online supervised play session. This is evolving nicely with many regular partnerships coming online to play against each other on a rotating basis, although anyone is welcome to join, with or without a partner. To finalise numbers and tables it is very helpful if you can sign up by Monday evening. Annabel and I can normally arrange things so that latecomers are accommodated as well, but it is not possible to guarantee a place if you only contact us on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile a few more group coaching sessions are gradually coming back into operation; contact me if you are interested in one of the few remaining slots. There will be both a Beginners and an Advanced course starting in mid-October, and probably an Essential/review course as well. To accommodate as many people as possible, these will probably be in a number of discreet modules rather than in short sessions over an eight week period. The new bridge platform I mentioned last week, which is being set up in the UK as competition to Bridge Base Online looks promising, but as it currently stands looks better for supervised play than for group coaching, as a number of features that are on BBO are not yet incorporated into the system. Will keep you posted as this develops.

This is a short update to give you the chance to join the events that are happening this week. The Monday seminar tomorrow (9.30am to 11.30am) is on bidding after the opponents open the bidding with One No Trump. It will cover the Landy convention (very popular and part of the Robson method) , doubling and suit overcalls. Given how common the 1 No Trump opening is, this is an important part of the game where many tend to go wrong. You can sign up here as normal (see the sidebar).

The same goes for Tuesday morning’s online supervised play session. This is evolving nicely with many regular partnerships coming online to play against each other, though anyone is welcome to join, with or without a partner. To finalise numbers and tables it is very helpful if you can sign up by Monday evening. Annabel and I can normally arrange things so that latecomers are accommodated as well, but it is not possible to guarantee a place if you only contact us on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile the group coaching sessions are also getting back into gear, with five already back in action and others due to restart this week. There will be more news about courses and lessons in the next couple of weeks. Along with many other bridge teachers, I have been looking at a new platform which is being set up in the UK as competition to Bridge Base Online, where a number of changes are due to come into effect over the next few weeks following the sale of the site a little while ago to a more commercially-minded company. More details on this if and when we decide to make a change.