Learn and play bridge!

Welcome

BridgeMojo is ACBL accredited bridge teacher Morris "Mojo" Jones, offering games and bridge classes for the greater Pasadena area and San Gabriel Valley.

Bridge Games

Join us for our weekly Monday evening duplicate bridge game for non-Life Masters. This is a sanctioned ACBL bridge game for new bridge players with aspirations of enjoying the pleasures of modern bridge anywhere in the world.

Bridge Classes

Mojo offers classes through PCC Extension for brand new and continuing bridge players, offering Audrey Grant's acclaimed Better Bridge curriculum.

Sign up to see Double Dummy by Sept. 11! Screening on Sept. 18. See the trailer here

Come see Double Dummy Sept. 18

From Double Dummy, purses gathered at the bridge club

I'm excited! I've arranged to present a screening of Double Dummy, a documentary about bridge by new filmmaker John McAllister.

Poster for Double DummyI'm presenting Double Dummy at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 in Pasadena on Sept. 18 at 7:30.

Double Dummy introduces us to the world of bridge that we know and love, then takes us into the unfamiliar, exciting world of youth bridge. The film follows the adventures of several young players as they compete in the 2012 World Youth Bridge Team Championship, which the U.S. team had never won.

Class Schedule, Fall 2018

Now open for registration!

Mojo with Audrey Grant in Toronto, Summer 2017
Mojo with Audrey Grant at the Better Bridge Teachers Convention, Toronto, 2017

Bridge I — An Introduction

This is the first class from Audrey Grant's acclaimed Better Bridge program.

This is the starting point for a lifetime of fascination with bridge. No experience required.

Newcomers will learn the mechanics of the game through its historical predecessors: whist and auction bridge. This is not a lecture class! You'll be playing cards at the table from the beginning.

BridgeMojo in August

August 2018 at BridgeMojo by the numbers:

Total tables 52
Number of individual players 88
Players awarded masterpoints 54
Total masterpoints reported (excluding STaC overalls) 43.44

Inside the club, Hilary Clark and Rosemary Schroeder were the top winners this month with 2.68, excluding their STaC overall award at 3rd in the conference.

In the Western Conference STaC overalls, Dennis Burke and Ray Boncato had a big win to take the 0-750 tournament for Monday evening, earning 3.15 silver points for their win!

Partner opens NT and you have clubs

Board 2 in the August 13 game raised an interesting bidding question.

2

 ♠J93
♥982
♦Q
♣KJ9742		 Dlr: East
Vul: N-S
♠A82
♥Q5
♦AJ6543
♣T8		   ♠T76
♥KJT63
♦KT87
♣5
  ♠KQ54
♥A74
♦92
♣AQ63		  

 

The question by email:

Last night on Board #2, South opened 1NT. As North, how do I reach 3-4♣? If 2♣ means Stayman, should I bid 3♣ with only 7HCP?

Moving on up, August 2018

I've started receiving news of rank changes, so I'll do my best to celebrate them here. Congratulations to these players on new ACBL Masterpoint ranks!

Junior Master

Gail Klein

Club Master

Christine Atkinson

Sectional Master

Charles Jarai
Denise Wreede

Regional Master

Bonnie Cox
Lynn Sager

July 2018 at BridgeMojo

July was a great month, with five Mondays. One was a STaC game, and many folks won silver points. We even had our first swiss team game!

For July:

  • Total Masterpoints reported: 45.54
  • Number of players receiving Masterpoints: 66

The biggest winners with Denise Wreede and Karmen Armoudjian, with 2.12 for the month. Next up was Leila Otey with 1.73

 

Reminding declarer which hand they're in

dummy hand at the table

Lately I've had some timely questions about a practice that seems to have become common especially among novice and intermediate players. I had an email from a director in Palm Desert who has noticed this practice, and a question about it at my most recent summer bridge class.

Players, as dummy, have been routinely reminding declarer which hand they're in. The common thing is tapping the table to remind declarer that she's "on the board."

When it was brought up in class, I said, "Well it has to stop!" which got a bit of a chuckle.

Let me go into detail about dummy's rights and privileges. They're quite explicitly called out in the Laws of Duplicate Bridge.

First, there's Law 42 B. "Qualified Rights" paragraph 2.:

2. He may try to prevent any irregularity.

Bidding for the 2017 Laws

Morris Jones
July 9, 2018

The 2017 edition of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge brought in many small changes, and one huge one: Law 23, the Comparable Call rule. The intent is to preserve a bridge result in place of the rather severe penalties of earlier laws. It's not a bad thing, but we'll be adapting to it for quite a while.

Imagine this situation: LHO (Left-hand opponent) is the dealer, but you're distracted with a good hand and you put down a 1♠ bid. The director is called, and your bid-out-of-turn is not accepted by the opponents.

The director cancels your bid, and the auction reverts to LHO who passes. Your partner has no restrictions, but is not allowed to act on the unauthorized information of your 1♠ bid. Partner opens 1♥. RHO passes.

Let's Play Teams July 2

I've been looking for just the right time to introduce a team game at BridgeMojo. I think July 2 is that perfect day.

It's the start of the Los Angeles Regional "Bridge Week" in Long Beach, with team events every day.

The Pasadena-San Gabriel Sectional will be playing Swiss Teams on July 29.

It's sort of a holiday week.

Team-of-four games at bridge use somewhat different scoring from the matchpoint pair games we usually play. It's actually much better in terms of "pure bridge." Matchpoint scoring tends to distort and magnify very small differences in score, and reduce the impact of large differences.

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