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Brief Description |
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57 |
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10th June. We have just had our first Tripple Crown winner of 2007. I have decided to write up a page for the Tripple crown hall of Fame in the Results section. |
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56 |
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7th June. I have found a source of bridge related cartoons and so have made a new section. I will be adding one cartoon every month. |
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55 |
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3rd June. As the web presentation of the news-sheets is now quite acceptable I have decided to discontinue writing pdf files. If you prefere the pdf format then let me know and I can write them up. |
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54 |
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1st June. I have changed the About Pattaya page so that is is now not just a bunch of links. The main reason for this was to improve the overall Google pagerank. |
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53 |
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28th May . I have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to improve the Google page ranking. The main page is up to a very respectable PR5 and most of the internal pages are PR3 with the conventions page at PR4. |
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52 |
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12th Mar. I have included a language translator. It seems to work OK but unfortunately does not handle the formatting, so the news-sheets do not look that nice. However, it may be useful for those who don't fully understand my English. |
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51 |
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14th Nov. I have added a search engine that searches the best bridge sites on the web for bridge conventions. Try it out: -
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50 |
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5th Nov. I have added a reader's poll. There are just a couple of questions at the moment, I'll add more when I think of them or if I get any suggestions. |
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49 |
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5th Nov. I have added a message board (forum). The main purpose for it is to advertise for a partner but I guess that you can leave any sensible message. |
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48 |
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1st Nov. I have finally got round to putting some of the bridge club photos on the site. You can view them at the Picture Gallery. |
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47 |
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28th Oct. I have found out how to make the news-sheet into a respectable web page without involving too much work from me - it would take me about 4 hours to make up a complete news sheet in web page format. Have a look at the web pages from news sheet 108 onwards. |
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46 |
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19th Oct. I have included a link to a Suit break calculator . It's really great when you get the hang of it. It enables you to input the missing cards, and anything else that you know about a defender's hand, and out pops the probabilities of all the possible distributions. |
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45 |
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17th Oct. I have tidied up all of the external links, and we now have a directory. |
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44 |
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3rd Sept. I have included a PayPal donation button on the main site page for anybody who feels that thay would like to contribute towards the upkeep of this site. I have plans for a few things that may be purchased at a later date. |
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43 |
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2nd Sept. The book "The definitive guide to (strong) No Tump Bidding, Stayman and Transfers" has finally been published. Details are in the link |
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42 |
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31st July. The re-design of the main page is now complete. Just the one main page is non-frame technology due to the limitations of search engines. |
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41 |
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29th July. I have included a new link/section titled 'General Bridge Topics'. I found I needed this for items that do not belong in the Bridge Conventions seection. The article which prompted this was when I wrote up something on restricted choice. |
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40 |
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24th July. I have improved and expanded the expanded the 'abbreviations and terminology' section. There's loads of useful information there, check it out. |
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39 |
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13th July 2006. The update to Frames technology is now complete - what a job! For technical reasons the main index page cannot be with frames but I will be re-designing it soon with the same links column as the rest of the site. |
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38 |
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27th June 2006. The site is getting quite large and complex now, so I've included a site map. |
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37 |
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24th June 2006. I've added a few extra links in the left links column. 'General Web Links' is basically a list of reciprocal links requires by various search engines, web directories etc. |
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gives the current time for cities worldwide. |
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converts any currendy into any other currency. |
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36 |
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| 9th May 2006. I have installed a decent |
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| search engine within the site. |
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35 |
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24th April 2006. I have finally finished the left frame and soon all of the main pages will be in frames format. |
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34 |
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20th April 2006. I have been busy reorganising the site. Some new additions are in the 'Fun Stuff' section. |
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33 |
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21st March 2006. I am busy re-designing the site. Apart from the completely new appearance I'm changing it over to frame technology. But it's a long business..... |
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32 |
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21st March 2006. I have added a guestbook (actually a guest map/book). Put in an entry telling me what you think (politely please). |
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33 |
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21st March 2006. I am busy re-designing the site. Apart from the completely new appearance I'm changing it over to frame technology. But it's a long business..... |
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32 |
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21st March 2006. I have added a guestbook (actually a guest map/book). Put in an entry telling me what you think (politely please). |
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31 |
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16th March 2006. I have put up a new page, famous bridge quotes. |
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30 |
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| 5th Feb 2006. As my expertise at web-site management has increased I've tried to liven up the site. It's small beginnings, but there are now a few pictures in the main page and the Pattaya Links page has been completely re-vamped. Check it out. |
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29 |
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I have inserted the odd hit counter in the site. It looks like we get around 400 hits a week, not bad for a small club with around 50 members. |
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28 |
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After 12 years inflation has finally caught up with us! The paying fee has been 50 bht for well over 10 years now but we have had to increase it to100 bht for for members and 150 bht for guests. See below for the new location. |
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27 |
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Well, obviously, we have moved! Let's hope it all works out this time. The new location is the Mercure hotel, situtated in the centre of Pattaya, check the 'contact us' link for details. |
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26 |
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As you have probably understood from things I have said earlier, the web-site I took over was not at all satisfatory. Just one of the problems was that it was 'designed' (I use that word loosely) to 'work' on just one browser and just one of the problems was that the page width was not set up sensibly. I hope that I have now corrected this for most pages, but please contact me if you find a page that does not immediately fit in with your browser - by that I mean that you should not have to use a button at the bottom of the page to shift right to see the complete page. I feel that the complete page width should be shown automatically on all pages and if you find a page that does not conform with your browser then please contact me. |
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25 |
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I have removed the 'wonderful' Pattaya Bridge Club logo from all of the pages. As I mentioned in earlier 'what's new?s', the original design of the web site was very antiquated, only worked on one browser, had no suit symbols, had the news-sheets incorrectly set up, had meta-data referring to a Norwegian sailing club instead of a bridge club and enormous navigation problems (it appears that the 'designer' did not even know how to put in hyper links correctly) together with other problems too long to list. In short, it was a mess. I do not claim to have a 'doctorite' in computer sciences, but I soon learnt enough about web sites to realize what a really shoddy piece of work it was. Unfortunately I did a lot of work putting in new stuff on this unsound foundation and it will now take me a long time to finally get a decent web site. I am updating it and slowly removing all remnants of the original 'design', hopefully there will soon be nothing left to remind us of the terrible start we got. The moral? I guess you should think twice before taking up somebody's offer to help you for free, we would have been much better off getting it set up by a professional. |
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24 |
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The club library of bridge books has now expanded to 150+ titles. The books are free for members to borrow, simply ask me for the title you want. Click Library for a complete list of titles /authors. |
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23 |
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I have had a good thrash around in the Conventions section. In particular, one question that I am frequently asked (it's in the FAQs) is about 1♠ in the sequence |
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1♣ - 1♦ - 1♥ - 1♠. Is 1♠ natural or 4th suit forcing? This is completely covered in 4th Suit Forcing in the Conventions section. |
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22 |
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I am often repeatedly asked the same questions. So we now have a news section - FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions (together with answers of course). |
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21 |
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We are now moving into the peak season and it looks like 7+ tables for the next few months. So that means Mitchell movements and I use the Dealmaster Pro program to generate the hands on Mondays and Fridays. We get a printout of all of the hands and I also put it on the web. It's interesting to note what I said about browsers below. Dealmaster are obviously aware of the problem and simply put S H D C for the suits. Anyway, it is otherwise well presented and you simply have to click on the link in the results page to get the hands. |
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20 |
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It took a while, but I have finally got all of the old news-sheets written up, together with a very comprehensive index for each year and a grand index of all of the sheets. |
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19 |
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A couple of people have 'complained' about navigation problems. Now as you may or may not know, I was 'landed' with the running of this site when I had absolutely no knowledge/experience of web-sites whatsoever. But I am a fast learner and it soon became apparent to me that the design of the site was far from 'latest technology' and only worked 'correctly' on one browser (Internert Explorer). Despite my limited knowledge (I do not claim to have a 'doctorate in computer technology') I have now been able to overcome some of the shortcomings in the original design. So you should now be able to revert back to from whence you came using whatever browser you choose (green arrow top left)! |
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18 |
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About Browsers. In fact I have endeavoured to make this web-site viewable with any browser and have checked it out using Firefox, Avant Browser, Crazy Browser, Netscape and Opera in addition to Internet Explorer. The site works OK with all of them but some are better than others. Opera seems to have a narrow page width and I am not doing to reduce the page width to accomodate Opera. But the most important thing for me is the suit symbols - ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣, these look different using different browsers. Do these all appear the same size on your page? - if not then try one of the three browsers I recommend below. A number of sites that I have checked out get round this problem by using S H D C instead of the symbols. This is unattractive and messy so I went to work and eventually found the fonts (yes - that is the plural, the ♦ symbol had to be a different font from the others) that worked on all of the browsers that I tested with, but unfortunately the symbols look much better on some than others. Internet Explorer, Avant and Crazy Browser are all excellent. Netscape, Mozilla Firefox and Opera do not work so well. |
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17 |
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I have been busy trying to get the site up there in the search-engine rankings. Now you might have thought that Pattaya and Bridge would get our site right to the top - no chance! You simply get 100's of pages about people who visited Pattaya and then went to the river Kwai. So try bridge-club then? Now this works with some search engines (MSN is excellent) but I've given up with Google - it's hopeless! Just try it! Any references you do find with Google are ancient newspaper articles saying we meet in Soi 4 or even the Cafe Royal! What a joke! It appears that the Google philosophy is just to list popular sites - regardless of how old the data is or whether thay actually match your key words or not. |
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So get in touch with Google and inform them of their shortcomings? Tried that. Their arrogant attitude seems to be that they simply don't care about small sites - it's the big ones where the big bucks come from. |
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I most certainly suggest you try one of the above search engines rather than Gooooooo............. |
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16 |
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One thing that I did do that improved our rankings was change the 'meta-data' in the site. Meta data is hidden data used by search engines; when I took over the site they all referred to a Norwegian Sailing Club! It took me sometime to change all of the pages. |
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15 |
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All of the news-sheets from 2004 and 2003/2 have now been put up on the web. |
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14 |
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I,ve been pretty busy (as usual) with the news-sheets etc. The search engine I put in is not that great (though good fun). So I have compiled a separate, more complete, index for both the 2005 and 2004 news-sheets. Obviously you can then search the index with whatever means you opened it (Microsft Word or Acrobat). |
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13 |
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Regulars will notice a huge change in the main page. This is because when I took over the web-site it appears that it was 'designed' with very old technology and only for people using the Internet Explorer browser. The links were all in the 'template' grey column on the left and were alligned with the corresponding text only with that browser. Using Opera or Netscape or another browser it was a mess - especially as the site expanded. Anyway, I have now learned enough about web-sites to realise that this was poor design and have changed it to something sensible. And expect a brand new main page soon - when I have learned enough to make a really good site. By that I mean in the presentation - obviously the content is beyond reproach? |
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12 |
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All of the 2005 news-sheets are now up on the web in pdf and Word Doc format. I have also written up the 2004 and 2003 yearbooks (in the original Word Doc format) so that all of the news-sheets are now on the web, but not yet individually nor in pdf format. I'm still hard at it and it'll all be there eventually. |
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11 |
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I have found out how to insert the suit ( ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ ) symbols into the HTM code, so the site will become much more readable. You should try maintaining a web site - you try out something (say something as 'simple' as the ♣ symbol) and it appears to work great (on say, Internet explorer) but then you try Netscape or Opera and you get something completely different! Great fun!! |
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10 |
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I have included a search engine within the site; it not that wonderful (it generally comes up with just 5 results if your'e lucky), but it's free! I still have a few teething problems but I'll get them sorted out eventually. |
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9 |
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Just one of the entries is on the 2♦ opening. It is a comparison between various options for your 2♦ opening: - Weak, Flannery, Multi, Roman, Mini-Roman or Benjamin - take your pick. |
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8 |
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I have added a new section to the 'conventions' link. The new section (3) compares different conventions that do the same thing; or compares different meanings for the same bid. There are a number of different topics discussed. |
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So now that a large portion of the site is also in PDF format, why not check out Quest Transfers, the best (only?) way to bid both invitational and game forcing 5-4 / 4-5 major suited hands opposite partner's 1NT opening - so it's goodbye Smolen. It's probably best to read about them in context (section 2.6.2 of the NT bidding book) but you can simply look them up if you prefer. |
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6 |
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I have been busy 'behind the scenes'. I've got the PDF program running and the NT bidding book is now also available in PDF format (easier for web viewing). Obviously most of the other stuff in the site will also be put up in PDF format in due course. |
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5 |
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In order to make the site more attractive to tourists and those not too familiar with Pattaya, I have included some links to general Pattaya sites in the About Pattaya link at the start of the main page. |
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4 |
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I have set up some links to other interesting bridge Web Sites. They are in Bridge links.of the main page of this web site and a link is also at the top of most pages (including this one). |
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3 |
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I have written up a fair bit on responding to partner's 2NT opening. There's not as much room compared with a 1NT opening and simply playing Stayman and Transfers is not good enough - you simply have no chance of uncovering all of the possible 5-3 or 4-4 major suit fits below the level of 3NT. But there are solutions and the best revolves around Puppet Stayman - it's called the Niemeijer complex. |
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Check it all out in 'responding to partner's 2NT opening'. |
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2 |
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Many conventions have been added over the last week or so, so have a look in the conventions link. Perhaps the most interesting that is something new (unless you have already read the NT bidding book) is the Stayman Super-Accepts. |
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1 |
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The NT bidding book is now complete. And by complete, I mean complete - every conceivable sequence after a 1NT opening is defined. But be warned, it is rather advanced. Now this NT bidding book contains a number of new treatments/conventions; and if you want to quickly check out 'what's new?' in the book and dramatically improve your NT bidding, then click 'what's new?'. |
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