We are delighted to announce that our Saturday Seminar series is back and taking place online using Bridge Base Online and Zoom videoconferencing. Eight seminars will be held starting from 17th October 2020 and running until 6th February 2021. The seminars are aimed primarily at Next Step+/Intermediate players (with a couple aimed at more advanced players), however, they are open to anyone who wants to improve their bidding and defence skills. 

Booking is through the website as usual with online payment at the time of booking. Please book early as seminars are likely to book up quickly.

Each seminar starts at 10.00am and ends at 12.30pm. The cost is £12 per seminar and includes full notes and commentary on the hands played. The tutor for all seminars is Charlie Bucknell.

If you have any questions or problems with the booking process please email education@oxfordbridgeclub.com.

Level: Next Step+, Intermediate

This seminar is aimed at those who are looking to sharpen up their defensive edge over their peers and want to be able to start building the hands as a defender to help ensure the maximum number of tricks. Giving count is a particularly useful device to assist in hold-up plays, most commonly in No Trumps and a way of giving partner ruffs in Trump contracts. This seminar will help teach how to use count to evaluate the hand as a whole and improve upon defensive techniques already established.

Level: Next Step+, Intermediate

This seminar will focus on the very narrow precipice of bidding game or stopping in part-scores and how best to utilise the bidding space available to us to evaluate our hand opposite our partner. How do we know that our King of Diamonds will be gold dust in 4 Spades? Is our Ace of Clubs a good card? Game tries help us determine what cards partner needs to make the perfect hand and what cards will be of no use. This seminar will help you understand when to make a game try, when to accept and when to reject. It will also focus on what hands should not be used for game tries - either too strong or too weak.

Level: Next Step+, Intermediate

This seminar will cover the murky waters of what we need to judge when partner makes a penalty double over 1NT. It will briefly cover escapes from penalty doubles for a weak No Trump in both seats if the double is out of position. The seminar will mainly focus on the advancer of the penalty double, when to convert into penalties and when to run, and what to do if the opponents use an escape mechanism, eliminating any issues of what is forcing, what is penalty, and what is natural.

Level: Intermediate, Intermediate+ 

This seminar covers a wide range of topics, as competitive auctions will always differ based on agreements, but it will provide a general set of principles designed to help you incorporate your toolbox into the tighter auctions with less space, and ensure that you can catch your opponents if need be. The focus will be on the strength shown from different calls in competitive auctions, and what your partner should expect from your actions. This seminar will also consider the modern principles used to respond to 3-level pre-empts from your partner. 

For those interested, there will be an additional 30 minute discussion after the end of the seminar on an expert level response kit to a 3 Club pre-empt. This will be followed by questions. 

Level: Next Step+, Intermediate 

This seminar is all about supporting partner. This is the most important aspect of the bidding. It will cover direct raises in opening sequences as well as raises in competitive sequences. It will suggest a more scientific approach to how we can support our partner and show a wider range of hands more descriptively to assist their judgement of the hand.

Level: Intermediate, Intermediate+, Advanced 

This seminar will cover a number of defences to pre-empts, predominantly at the 2 level, but also offer a brief look at higher level pre-empts. The defences to pre-empts help us judge the strength in our partnership to ensure we don't overreach in the more compact space made available to us. Defences covered will include Rubensohl, Lebensohl and Natural methods. It is always more difficult to judge a hand when the opponents remove so much bidding space, but the key is to ensure that you aren't the one ending the hand with a minus score when you hold the cards. 

Level: Next Step+, Intermediate 

This seminar will take an overview of the ‘slam zone’, one of the most exciting aspects of the game. It will look briefly at the Roman Keycard Blackwood engine, when to re-raise and some extra steps that help make your slams have a greater chance of success. The seminar will also consider when 4NT should be used as RKCB or as quantitative (an invite to 6NT) and how best to respond to this. Finally, it will consider why we should use cue bidding on our way to the slam zone, how to use it and when cue bidding tells us to stop bidding a slam (even if we are only missing one key card!).

For those interested, there are further steps available to RKCB (for re-raising and 3rd enquiries) and 5NT responses to NT and unagreed sequences typically used by modern experts. This will be discussed at the end of the seminar.

Level: Next Step+, Intermediate 

This workshop will cover a lot of the topics covered by the 23rd January Slam Bidding seminar in practice and add Exclusion Blackwood to your toolbox.

This is aimed at those who are attending the 23rd January seminar or those with equivalent knowledge.