Thanks to Frank Weeks for this Blog

These things happen.  The opposition opened with a 1S and as I had five hearts  and 15 points I called 2H.   With the opposition moving to 2S my partner called 3H. Assuming we had nine hearts between us and at least 24 points I called 4H but was horrified when my partner put his hand down and revealed he only had one point. Incredible to say, I made game.      A combination of being able to cross trump plus the opposition throwing a wrong card in the final plays I made the four.  Being the only players in the room to make the bid plus making it gave us a top board of course. Unfortunately the result board does not show the hands on the particular night so I was unable to record the card distribution for posterity.     However, the moral of the story is,  please do not raise a bid to the three level with one point in your hand.  Heart attacks are not encouraged.

There are a couple of exciting new developments are happening in this area.

• Vil Gravis, long-time respected Grandmaster (since before 1992) has started contributing commentary on the X-Clubs Home Page
• Pianola reporting is now available for all X-Clubs sessions. Click here to Register for Pianola results e-mails.

Vil's commentaries are aimed at the newer players in his home club of Lower Hutt. They play on a Wednesday night so many of his comments are on boards that will have been played at other clubs too. Sometimes he discusses points that pop up in other sessions .. these articles provide valuable insight to all of us.
Bob Fearn, programmer of Compass scoring, has broken new ground in working up Pianola reporting of X-Clubs results. This means that any registered player who completes an X-Clubs session can now receive their X-Clubs results in an e-mail from Pianola. There is no charge for this excellent service.
Thanks to the generosity of James Ward, founder and CEO of Pianola, it will not be strictly necessary for a club to subscribe to Pianola so that its members can get Pianola results. Pianola e-mails will be going out to any X-Clubs players who register an e-mail address with X-Clubs. It's very easy to unsubscribe from this new set of e-mails if it's just all TOO MUCH!! .. (but we hope you give it a shot before doing so).
Once you set up an account with Pianola your playing history will steadily accumulate on-line with the percentages being a much closer assessment of your result than what gets posted on the club noticeboard.