"Al and friends" in Rays-ladder

Mihailo and Ruzica

My wife Ruzica (Cvet at BBO) and me (Miksa at BBO) have started to learn bridge in October 1996. using Ron Klinger's book "Basic Bridge" (ACOL system). That book was the only learning tool beside once-a-week visiting our local bridge club and kibitzing (about a month) and playing there. We played about 5 months and then we had a long break: we had to take care of our newborn son first and after four years our daughter.

In December 2004. we convinced each other that our children were not babies any more and that we should go back to our second love - bridge. We had to start almost from the beginning. This time we've chosen SAYC thanks to Fred Gitelman's "Learn to Play Bridge" software.

Still without any teacher (mentor) our self-education is based primarily on the Internet resources, BBO being the primary one. We learn as much as our professional and family duties allow so very often we are in the position of the Buridan's ass - we would like to improve our bridge skills but can't afford to spend too much time for that.

We play SAYC with standard carding and odd/even first discard. We use standard conventions: D.O.N.T, FSF, Jacoby 2NT, Jordan 2NT, Michaels, NMF, RKCB 1403, Splinter, transfers (including to minors), Unusual NT, weak 2 opening (diamonds, hearts, spades). After strong 2C we play 2D waiting response unless we have 5 carder clubs or hearts with 2/3 top honours (the next ranking suit after opener's is second negative). Jump raise in majors promises 4 card support. In slam exploration we are cuebidding first or second control.

We don't have our own CC (FD). When partnering Al, we use FD that help us very much to understand his system or some conventions that we don't know well (Cappelletti, transfer to minors etc). If you are interested, please see the attachment (you might try to use it when play with Al).

We live in Novi Sad, Serbia (time zone is CET, that is GMT+1). Ruzica has Master of Science Degree in Chemical Technology but her current job is Help documentation and Web design. Mihailo is computer engineer and works as programmer. We both work at home, so at any time one of us is available to help the team, if needed, except Thursday afternoon/evening as that's the time for our local bridge club. We have two children: Andrej (son) is 9 and Nina (daughter)is almost 6.

Attached are our pictures from the last summer.

We are happy to be in the same team with all of you and thanks again, Al, for your efforts to give us all the opportunity to improve our bridge skills.

See you at BBO :)

Ruzica Cvetkovic ("Cvet")
Mihailo Krstic ("Miksa")