Brian Senior

a) With DOPI: If the opponents bid after Exclusion RKCB then: Double: Shows 0 or 3 key cards Brian Senior Pass: Shows 1 or 4 key cards Top Table 1st Step: Shows 2 key cards without the trump queen BRIAN SENIOR plays as a professional partner or 2nd Step: If this response does not bypass the established team-mate, is a bridge teacher, and a bridge trump suit, then it shows journalist. While he has written many books on 2 key cards and the trump the game, he is perhaps best known as the editor, queen publisher, and a major contributor to the official b) With ROPI: If the opponents double your Exclu - world champion ship book each year. Brian has, at sion RKCB, then: different times, represented Great Britain, Redouble: Shows 0 or 3 key cards England, Northern Ireland and Ireland in Pass: Shows 1 or 4 key cards click international competition, and has won all the 1st Step: Shows 2 key cards without the trump queen link major EBU teams competitions at least once. 2nd Step: If this response does not bypass the established When did you start playing bridge? ham Panthers, currently the most success - trump suit, then it shows Back in my early to mid-teens, my grand - ful team in the UK. I also like cinema and 2 key cards and the trump mother taught me many different card not too heavy theatre, and read science fic - queen games, including bridge. tion, history and biographies. How often do you play? What do you like and what would you Again, as before, if you normally play 1430 I play very little club bridge, but play tour - change in bridge? responses with your RKCB, then the first naments at the weekends and, if anybody I like the fact that, however serious a com - two responses in the above sequences are wants to take me, events overseas. One of petition may be, there is always a social inverted – this is a matter for regular the best things about the job I do is the element to the game, with the opportuni - partnerships to agree on. opportunity to visit so many interesting ty to talk to many different people during Let’s look at one more example to places, so if anyone out there wants to a session, and when we go to a tourna - demonstrate the system in action – once employ a grumpy old bridge pro for a for - ment we meet up with many of the same again, in an uncontested auction: eign tournament – I’m your man! people again and again, though I am of course concerned at the shortage of new Do you always play with the same blood coming into the English tourna - partners / team-mates? ment scene. What do I dislike? As with life ´ A K Q 10 8 5 ´ J 4 I play with many different partners and in general, bridge in the UK is over-regu - ™ A K J 5 N ™ Q 10 7 6 2 team-mates, though I do have some regu - lated. Alert this, announce that, you can’t t K Q J W E t A 8 3 S lars. What do I expect from them? That play that convention, the extended Rule of ® Void ® 7 5 2 they always try their best and don’t make 25, two identical convention cards – I silly mistakes out of laziness. write this fresh from playing a tournament in Manila, where I think I saw one oppo - What do you do for a living? West East nent in five days with a convention card, As my previous answers will have suggested, 2® 2t and yet there were no problems. 2´ 3™ I am a professional bridge player, though a 5®1 5™2 substantial part of my time is also taken up What’s the bridge success (so far) 5´3 7™4 with bridge journalism. I regularly work on closest to your heart? 1 Exclusion RKCB the daily bulletins at world and zonal cham - I have won bridge events all around the pionships, and am the current editor and world, and also lost some that I should 2 1 or 4 key cards (2nd step) publisher of the official world champion - have won. Some meant a lot at the time for 3 Do you have the trump queen? ship book each year. Though the journalism one reason or another – perhaps because 4 Yes! pays less well than playing, it provides some of who I was partnering, perhaps because variety and better all-round balance to life. I played particularly well – but if I had to Here we see a lovely auction where the choose one win it would be playing for What are your favourite bridge books? opener can use Exclusion over 3 ™ to try to Northern Ireland in the Camrose, back in I like biographies of top players rather than locate the vital diamond ace. The response the days when each match lasted for an books on technique or system. shows one key card (outside of clubs, entire weekend, and beating England – remember) so there can be no ambiguity What are your hobbies? only the second time N. Ireland had ever here. The opener checks up on trump Apart from travel, I like watching sport, done so. Since then I have also had the solidity by bidding the next suit up to ask cricket being my number one (as should be dubious privilege of playing for England for the trump queen. Without it the expected of a Yorkshireman), though the against N. Ireland and losing. Given how responder would have signed off in 6 ™ but sport I most go to see live is ice-hockey –I rare and precious those N. Irish wins have with it can jump to the cold grand slam. take my teenage daughter to see Notting - been, that puts me in a unique position. Happy slam bidding! r www.ebu.co.uk April 2014 English Bridge 23.

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