Biarritz, the inevitable festival
In early July the Biarritz festival welcomed bridge players from all over France with a special place for Spanish visitors. This big international celebration lasts 10-15 days and is organised by Franck…
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3♠ and 3NT relay control bids
In order to reach a good slam in a suit, you have to discover support, quantify your assets, check for controls and finally apply Blackwood. The process of checking follows the showing…
Exclusion Blackwood
You want to know your partner’s number of key cards but there is a hitch. You have a void! The ace in the suit will often be useless to you. To get…
The Inferences of Game-Forcing 2-over-1
Game-forcing 2-over-1, which is part of the American standard, is emerging in France where it is given overwhelming support by its champions as it makes sequences more natural. But it imposes changes…
The 2NT opening and its continuations
Here, Alain Lévy takes stock of the system used by the best French players after a 2NT opening and suggests to us, as he often does, a few extra gadgets of his…
Huge difference
Slams create the biggest swings and sometimes decide the outcome of a match all by themselves. Everything is decided by the bidding and then … the opening lead. When they are not…
Responder’s Major Raises
Though the basics remain the same, showing support for a major as Responder has recently undergone some significant changes, for two main reasons: the emergence of 2-over-1 in a new suit becoming…
The new trial bids
The objective is to differentiate trial bids that invite game from those that investigate a slam all while following a guideline: to reveal as little as possible about declarer’s hand in game auctions and precisely identify responder’s hand in slam auctions.
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Choice of lead and signalling on the lead of an honour
What is a sequence? How many types are there? When should you lead the top of the sequence? What are the criteria for the lead of the King in No-Trumps? And above…
Roller Coaster!
Against winds and tides our solid rock, used by many as a reference you turn to. A talented professor of theory without equal, Alain Lévy possesses one of the best records in…
Bridge lesson: The take-out double
You are sitting left of opener. You have a good hand but you don’t know how to show it. Is this the moment to draw your Double card, this all-purpose weapon of…