Welcome to the website of Bridge on the Edge, based in St. John's, NL, Canada.  In 2016 we became a player owned bridge club.  We support a respectful culture, both at the bridge table and in all BOTE communications, for the enjoyment and growth of all members.  

Please contact info@bridgeontheedge.ca if you need additional information.

Members who want to use the member's functions (ie bookings etc), please ensure you've accessed the site using the bridgeweb link bridgewebs.com/onedge/.

Just a quick reminder to sign up on our webpage by tomorrow for the Milestones event if you are coming.  The people who are being celebrated include our very own hardworking Treasurer, one of our popular educators from Supervised Play, our Manager  and one of Roy’s students from his class of three years ago!  A varied crew for sure.  Hope to see you there.

Remember, the Milestones lunch, the Open Game and Duplicate lite games are all separate events requiring separate sign-ups..  

               Hope to see you there.

Pre-emptive bids cause good bridge players the most trouble as they are designed to use up bidding space & make life difficult for us to describe our hands or ever reach the optimum contract. The main goal of interference bids is to force us to make high-level decisions, often uncomfortable ones, that either win or lose that board. Play it safe & Pass, lose a make-able game - compete at a troublesome level & face your fate & failure. As we well know, wildly distributional hands are always poorly patterned. Pre-empt hands usually deal Goulies all round. So, if you do decide to stick your neck out & bid, you can often expect bad suit breaks. Trumps can often go 4-1 or God forbid, even 5-0?

Well, enough with the foreshadowing introductory paragraph, let’s see the deal.

Finally relaxed, after a long week, you sit down Friday evening for a nice early evening of Tournament online play & things start out a little bumpy as Partner seems intent on shooting himself in the foot. Luckily, so far, he only has two feet, so there is still ample time to get the wheels back on the bus & see if we can get our score out of the low 30s. 

Sitting West, you pick up Hand 11, no one vulnerable, & South, the Dealer bids 3♣ . 

You hold ♠ KQ76   ♥ KQ1065  ♦ 2  ♣ 984? Any cheerful thoughts? 

Imperfect Action Will Often Get You There Much Faster Than Perfect Inaction

I think a lot of people might be tempted to Pass & trust to their luck. But not a real Scorpio, who they say, starts their day activated & then climbs the ladder.

So, you decide to act because when the going gets tough, the Tough often make up cute sayings like this one as an excuse! You pull out a 3♥  bid & hear it go Pass, 4♥  by Partner. All Pass. Jack ♣  lead from North.

Finally, Partner does something right!

 He tables a gold star Dummy, ♠ AJ9 ♥ 97♦ AK1084 ♣ A63

Who could ask for more?

With good trump management, this contract should come home in a rabbit’s heartbeat.

We win ♣ J  with Dummy’s ♣ A, play the trump ♥ 7 from the board & do a double-take as South plays ♣ 5?

Not Everything Happens for a Reason, Sometimes Bridge Just Sucks

 Did I say expect bad breaks, how about you have to face one of the most improbable trump breaks you can imagine. Trumps will break 6-0. Yup, North holds 6♥ s sitting behind you, including the Ace-Jack of trumps!

Declarer is now about as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But a lot of us have seen this cat play pretty close to purr-fect on more than one occasion. One of the top players in BOTE once opined that Bink Lash is the best player in our Club; pretty high praise as we have some very accomplished Life Masters, as well as some up & coming aspirants in our membership.

What is the Difference in Prayer in Church & Prayer at the Bridge Table?
At the Bridge table you really mean it! Well, in hopeless contracts, there are 3 musts. First, do not panic! Second, don’t be the first one to make a mistake. Third, treasure all your spot cards. Bink played the ♥ Q, losing to the ♥ A. With nothing better to do North returned a ♠ , won in Dummy with the ♠ J. Now, comes the ♦ A & ♦ K , Bink pitching a club from his hand & ruffing a third  ♦ . All follow. Over to the ♠ A & Bink ruffs his 4th. ♦ with the ♥ 5, overruffed with ♥ 8. (Maybe not best). North exited with his last ♠ , (Mistake #2)? won by Bink with the ♠ Q. Light at the end of the tunnel?

It’s not a Matter of a Belief in Miracles, but How Many can You Hope For?

So if you are counting along, there are 9 cards played, 3 ♥ s, 3 ♠ s, 3♦ s & 1 ♣  & Bink has won 7 of them.  If as the old saying goes, Obstacles are Great Teachers then Bink is a pretty good student. He now played the good ♠ K & look at that treasured trump spot card in Dummy - the ♥ 9. North ruffed low, as all he had left were small ♥ s & Bink over-ruffed his good ♠ K with that precious ♥ 9. That’s 8 tricks in, just need 2 more to make it? Dummy’s ♦ 10 is boss so, Bink played it, tossing away his losing ♣ 9. Poor North had to trump in of course & lead away from his ♥ J-4 into the teeth of Bink’s ♥ Q-10. Plus 420.

They say diamonds are made under extreme pressure, so are some heart contracts!

The Merrie month of May will be a little merrier with the things we have planned at BoTE this month. First on Wednesday 27th of May at 1:00pm we will be holding a Royal STaC game with gold and silver points to be won. These are always fun and our club has done really well against the rest of the District in the past. Let’s do it again! 

Then, the following day, Thursday 28th,  noon to 1:00pm we will hold our annual Milestones event to honour our members who have achieved a new rank in the ACBL ladder of achievement. Several of our members have made significant advances this year and we invite all members to join us in celebrating! There will be a short ceremony followed by lunch. Following the event there will be our regular Thursday afternoon Open Pair and Duplicate lite games. Please sign up on our website for the Milestones event by Monday 25th so we know how many sandwiches to order. Sign up for the afternoon games is as usual. This is our Academy award ceremony so feel free to dress accordingly. 

We have not yet found anyone to coordinate our Longest Day event. If you would be willing to help out with this, please contact Judith at info@bridgeontheedge.ca. We have great guidelines from last year so it should not be an onerous task . 

Our next Board meeting will be on May 25th so if have anything you would like to see discussed please contact any Board member. 

And finally, we have clarified the shoe situation with St James and we can only wear ‘street shoes’ in July and August when there is no Taekwondo. Thanks for keeping that in mind.

Thanks to all for your support. Enjoy spring.

BOTE has introduced a series of training periods for new players over a number of years. To teach this game from the base up requires a great deal of preparation, enormous energy & patience, and   an abundance of empathy.  In the startup stages, (while course material may vary slightly), all the introductory classes focus on developing basic applications, teaching some simple fundamentals of bidding systems & most important of all, mentoring students on the technical skills in Declarer & Defence Play.

BOTE is so fortunate to have a number of great teachers to bring about these educational initiatives, that are not only the bread & butter of our daily operations, but are also our hopes for the future of bridge in NL. Attracting new players to our Club is essential for our continuance.

At every level of the early process in our educational journey, we all need hands-on guidance, a means to establish a sense of rapport & certainly a fun way to encourage sociable interaction.

BOTE is also lucky to have a very dedicated special person who has done due diligence over many, many years in a number of back-up roles.

While we all are familiar with the usual teacher names, one of our most dedicated & consistent mentors & tutors has largely gone under the radar.

But insiders in basic bridge education well know that Sandra Tobin has worked behind the scenes in every bridge advisory role possible, day in day out, month after month, year after year.

As a consistent Supervised Play supporter over the years, Sandra has made many bridge friends who have certainly profited from her excellent expertise, gentle guidance, & extensive experience. 

She also became a very early supporter of the 2023 Begin Bridge classes, continuing on throughout that year and mentoring that group as they progressed upwards through the Improver Sessions. A lot of that original group of BOTE players are now regular attendees of our popular Duplicate Lite Game on Thursday afternoons.

The publicity of the CBC Radio Noon Signal Program for BOTE, a PR initiative designed by Rick Callahan last August, potentially positioned us to attract new players, so the Education Committee decided to begin a Second Session on Introductory Bridge lessons. That turned out to be a well-timed decision as 20+ new students started up early in September & Sandra was there, right along-side Roy to go to work. About 15 of those same students found free time to commit to more lessons & Begin-Bridge II, launched another Session, finishing off just before the New Year. While Roy was off Tournament hopping, Sandra, kept the bridge ball rolling until the Christmas break. Roy & Sandra went back into classes in 2026 with Begin Bridge III, which added even more interested players & they taught together all cold winter long in both venues. 

The move to St. James was a positive one for education as we were now allotted new, very comfortable teaching premises of our own, small self-contained rooms, adjacent to the main hall. No set up required. We have easy access to the bidding boxes, practice boards & video monitor. Now while Roy is away again, Tournament bound at the beach Regional in Eastern US, (where he is also a Guest Lecturer), Sandra is currently organizing & supervising all the Spring Sessions of Begin Bridge III. She currently has over 20 players on her mail-out list who mix & mingle on Thursday mornings.

BOTE is very pleased to have Sandra’s assistance, hands-on support & her organizational skills to promote our club so as to help us run such a variety of Continuing Education Programs over the last number of years.

During March & April, Tom and Deirdre, our dedicated duo, designed & delivered a delightful package of lessons on defence on four Thursday mornings from 10:00am to noon at the main playing room at our St. James location. They began the first week on March 12th, with an information packed class, then followed up with 2 more in succession & then they added a fourth lesson, on April, 9. 

DECLARE, DUMMY, DEFEND

Defence is definitely a very important aspect of our game. And it is first & foremost a team effort. Good Defence tactics are certainly a challenging but crucial skill in bridge, as often, any given contract can be determined by just one trick. Whether a partnership wins or loses a board depends on who scores that decisive trick & there are a few things that can tilt the odds in your favour. Good defence depends largely on meticulous partnership communication, definitely a learned skill.

Bridge teachers are fond of reminding players that 25% of the time you Declare, 25% of the time you are Dummy, but 50% of the time you Defend. This simply means that you will spend half of your bridge life trying to find the best lead or to decide on the right suit to switch to. Those important topics were the structural guidelines of the course with individual lessons concentrating on The Opening leads, Third hand play, Attitude Signals & Suit Preference Options, Discards, Counting & Unblocking. The bottom half of the back of the Convention Card is given to defensive agreements & understanding how to defend accurately requires serious proactive preparation & planning.

DYNAMIC DIVERSIFIED DESIGN

Every Thursday lesson was designed with an illustrated lecture format, followed by supplementary table practice with prepared hands formatted to illustrate & reinforce the main topic areas. 

This mini session on Defence was a huge success as there were approximately 40 tables in attendance in total, during the 4 sessions. The Director at last Thursday’s Open Game, gave a pre-alert, “for us to be on our toes, as Defence at BOTE was now at a much higher standard than before.” We look forward to Tom & Deirdre delivering more continuing education sessions (or any other Teachers), for us in the future.

If there is any topic you as a player would like to see being offered, please let Michelle our Education Chair know. BOTE is a huge supporter of encouraging our newer players in all aspects of education & player development.