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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

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

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

“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

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