Went to play in a Contract Bridge tournament on Monday evening with Hong Aik as my partner. Quite happy to say that we ended up 5th, but unfortunately there were only 5 pairs. It is my 3rd time playing in a tournament... the first time was during Vesak Day when we got 14th out of 22 pairs; the second time was when we got thrashed during the inter-JC competition. Anyway, I think I did not do very well on Monday. The bidding was all right I guess, but my opening leads were all wrong which gave the declarer overtricks (or at least which allowed them to make the contract). My declaring was not good either, although we did not go down in any contract, but in terms of Matchpoints, any overtrick is important. There are boards which I just made the contract and that's all.

Oh yeah I just like the bidding using the bidding box, I dunno why. Maybe because it is 'cleaner' and you can easily review the bids. Oh yah just in case you don't know, the X and XX are Double and Redouble, meant to increase the stakes when you win or lose. The A is Alert, used when partner bids something that does not represent the suit bid, but there is a message to be sent to partner. There was once I bidded an artificial bid (Michael's cuebid), then Hong Aik took out the XX instead of the A (they are similar because both cards are blue in colour), then our opponents were saying, "Wah, you want to redouble your partner ah?"

Hmm, I guess I won't say much about the game, for more information can go Hong Aik's blog and read 16th December entry.