Bungendore Bridge Club Xmas Party

25 people turned up for the Bungendore Bridge Club Xmas party, to enjoy the food and wine and drinks. To gather together and bemoan the past year of 2022. Better than 2021, we are now playing face to face again, with most Covid-19 restrictions gone, but we are still using the bidding boxes. Some of us miss the larger table size, introduced to maintain social distancing, somehow there seemed more room for pens, coffee cups, elbows and so on

After the food and drinks, we had 6 tables and settled into some fun bridge that Jack Colwell had organized.

We played with high cards reversed, the 2 being the highest, the ace lowest. Playing the hand was the easy: the lower card takes the trick. Counting high card points and bidding was more difficult.

The next round was with ace being low and King the highest! Next was German Bridge, or German Whist, where you nominate the number of tricks you will make with your dealt hand with a specified trump suit, e.g. Hearts. Then you must make that bid, no more, no less. In this game you are playing individually and the total number of bid tricks cannot equal 13. If it does, Dealer must change their bid.

Next, we played with a nominated contract – 2 Spades by North. My partner and I had 5 spades each! So you can guess where that went. But declarer got to 6 tricks without having to touch trumps! Incidentally you can play 3-handed bridge like that. South is always dummy and you take turns being North, East or West and the contract is always 2 No Trump doubled!

The strangest round was displaying your hand to partner, partner displays their hand to you and you have to bid accordingly. Of course you can see the opponents’ hands as well, but you are so busy trying to formulate a bid from your partner’s hand, you take little notice. We ended up in 2 Hearts and made 5.

It was a great, fun evening and thanks must go to Jack Colwell for organizing the bridge part and to everyone else for the food and drinks and decorations.