Hi ,

Happy Friday! I hope you are doing well and taking care of yourself. When I sat down to start working this morning, I did a double-take realizing we are almost halfway through September. How strangely time passes these days! Perhaps in denial that summer has ended, I threw my laptop in a backpack to work outside today, so I'm sending you greetings from our nearby park.

I hope you'll enjoy our latest video with the fantastic Jack Stocken. After learning about the Unusual 2NT bid, we find ourselves with quite a challenge to make our contract. Luckily, we have Jack to guide us through this fun hand. Below that you'll find links you can use to register for next week's supervised play sessions.

Many thanks to you all - especially to the members of our classes - for making these free videos possible. We really appreciate your support.

Your partner in learning,

Bajir

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Watch on Youtube here

The Unusual 2NT bid is a popular convention but not a bid we have a chance to bid often. It’s very descriptive and the hand illustrates just how helpful it can be.

It would be easy to automatically accept down 1 on this hand but can we do better? Should we draw trumps or is there something more important to do first? Is there a layout we can make on?

Count losers in high level contracts and look to discard a certain loser before drawing trumps, if drawing trumps means losing the lead. Also be optimistic: play the hand with the only layout of the cards that will make the contract. In this hand, declarer needed three winning finesses!

After watching the video above, try playing all four hands for one of the boards below:

Keep learning with Jack Stocken: Join the class

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Next Week's Supervised Play Sessions

Thank you to everyone who joined us for last week's supervised play sessions. Register now to join us next week:

Acol - Tuesday at 9:30am UK time / 8:30pm NZ time: Register here

SAYC - Thursday at 1pm NY time: Register here

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