CABC meets at The Chepstow Club, 10 Moor St, Chepstow, NP16 5DD

We are a friendly, enthusiastic club, offering a warm welcome to new members of any standard.

We meet every Monday, starting promptly at 6:45 p.m.

Further to the discussion at the March 2026 AGM, we will be aiming to play 24 boards on our club nights.

There is some free on-site parking available, but drivers MUST register their cars at reception.

An opportunity to learn a new trick?

After Easter we will be running four sessions at Alvington Village Hall (7-9 p.m.) on conventions that could  improve your bidding. The topics are:

·     5 May:  ‘Accurate and obstructive bidding: The unassuming cue bid and trump raises’

·     19 May  ‘Two popular tools for bidding over opponents 1NT: DONT and multi-Landy’

·     2 June  ‘Cue-bidding: Getting to good slams with minimal HCPs’

·     16 June ‘Improving your slam bidding with poor man’s keycard and exclusion Blackwood’

All four sessions will feature set hands, to help those attending to work on their declarer play. Partners are arranged on the night. As all sessions are self-contained, everyone can come along to as many or as few as they wish. Cost is £3 per session, paid on the night.

If you are hoping to play on a particular evening, but lacking a partner, the easiest way to try and secure a game is to send a message to the club’s WhatsApp group.

If you are not on this group, but wish to join, send a request to Stewart Anderton  (s.anderton@btinternet.com)

If for any reason you prefer to not take this approach, please contact Richard Stevenson (rs240uk@yahoo.co.uk), and he will try and find you a partner.

League 13 - Summer 2026

The Summer 2026 League is now underway.  Please let Stewart know when match dates/times have been set so that they can be added to the matrix below. 

League 12 - Winter 2025/26

The Winter League is now complete 

Congratulations to Brian's team:  Brian, Marion, Lee and John - a strong finish bring you into the winning spot.

Congratulations to all of the above - very enjoyable competitions.

12 pairs enjoyed playing in the ECats Children in Need Simultaneous Pairs on Monday.

The results from the evening are available on the ECats web site:   here.

And commentary on each of he boards is available:   here.

The members and the club were very pleased to raise £300 which has been forwarded to ECats for the Children in Need charity.

Thank you to the ECats team for organising the event.

A tool for self-imrovement

Getting better at bridge takes time and effort – there are no shortcuts. In years gone by, many players would read books to improve. That's still an option, but thanks to the Internet, there is also the opportunity to play many hands and review the line you have taken, for better or worse. If you play club-bridge once a week, you might have just six hands as declarer, with no access to card-by-card replays. Supplement this with some on-line play, and it’s easy to declare and review 50 or more boards per week.

One downside of growing up in the UK is that you begin by learning Acol, while most of the rest of the world plays a form of 5 card majors, which dominate on-line bridge. However, now it’s possible to practice by yourself for free playing Acol (or 2-over-1, Precision, etc.). To do so, join IntoBridge (https://IntoBridge.com/).

As well as playing plenty of boards against random opposition on IntoBridge, each day you’ll have the opportunity to play 5 boards against an expert. Often these international players release videos, recording their thoughts while they are playing. Thanks to this, afterwards, you can learn where you – and possibly they – went wrong. You can find out more about the daily challenge here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVkkq2hZQHk

The unassuming cue bid

When partner opens the bidding and you have strong trump support, you want to keep the opposition out of the bidding and immediately jump to game. So, what should you do when you have opening points and trump support? Maybe you will also jump to game? But that can put partner in a quandary. Bidding is a communication between you and your partner, describing your hand so partner knows whether to consider a slam, a pass, or a double. 

Distinguishing between simply trump support and a strong raise is possible by adding to your armoury the unassuming cue bid, which is a bid of opponent’s suit. Offering an explanation of when to use the unassuming cue bid is professional bridge teacher Rob Barrington, playing against the robots in the Wednesday Morning Tournament. Head to board 4, starting at 18:50, to enjoy his insights.  See:  The Unassuming Cue Bid. 

What to open?

Hands with a 6-5 distribution are incredibly powerful, hence the phrase ‘6-5, come alive’. So, if you have enough points, you’ll open. But what do you do if you have a 6 card minor and a 5 card major. Do you bid the major first, given that you need less high-card points to make major game than a minor game? Or do you fear if you open a major, you’ll never described your shape to partner? Offering clear advice on what to do is recently crowned World Grand Master Gavin Wolpert, playing in The Wednesday Morning Tournament. The hand in question is board 3, starting at 16:46. See:  What to Open?

Aces and spaces?

Bridge has a number of well-known phrases. You may be familiar with ‘six-five, come alive’, ‘the five level is for the opponents’, and ‘aces and spaces’. But what are your thoughts on the latter?

According to leading bridge theorists Aces are undervalued by the Milton point count (Ace =4 points, King=3 points, etc.) - a value of 4.5 is a better representation of an ace's true value. But what about all those spaces? If you want the view of an Australian bridge pro, take a look at board 3 from his efforts in the BBO weekly free tournament (his play on board 3 starts just over 9 minutes in to this 28 minute video and the Aces and Spaces comments follow after he has played the board.  See: Aces and Spaces.

Congratulations all.