BRIDGE NOTES.
(With acknowledgments to several contemporaries.)
It would, I feel, be but fair to the great Bridge-playing public to preface these few notes with a word of warning against the writers whom I find to my regret affecting to speak with authority on this subject in other periodicals. Until, as in the kindred profession of Medicine, it is impossible to practise without a Bridge degree, nothing can be done to prevent these quacks from laying down the law. All I can do for the present is to point out that there is only one writer who can speak not merely with authority, but with infallibility, upon all matters pertaining to our national game.
In this the eighth instalment of my series on Auction etiquette, I should like to urge once more upon the young Bridge-player the importance of playing quickly. And this because yet another case has come under my notice in which much trouble might have been avoided by doing so. In this case A. took seven minutes to decide whether to play the King or the Knave, which, especially as the Queen had already been played, was, I consider, far too long. Y., the declarer, sitting on A.'s left, certainly found it so, for towards the end of the seventh minute he dropped off to sleep and his cards fell forward face upward on the table. Dummy having gone away in search of liquid refreshment, A. and his partner B. then played out the hand as they liked and then roused Y. to inform him that, instead of making game, he had lost three hundred above.
Now, A. and B. were strictly within the rules of Auction Bridge in acting as they did. There is no legal time limit for players, as there is at cricket. But it would have been more tactful had they roused Y. at once, that he might see what they were doing with his cards.
Nor should tact be confined to such comparatively rare incidents as this. For instance, it is a mistake to confuse Auction Bridge with Rugby football. I have known players who declared "Two No-trumps" in very much the same manner as that in which a Rugby football-player throws the opposing three-quarter over the side-line. Excessive aggression is a mistake. A young Civil Servant of my acquaintance even went so far as to abstain from claiming an obvious revoke when the delinquent was the chief of his department. Unfortunately, however, this young man, so wise in other ways, had the annoying habit of turning his chair to bring him luck. On one evening, when the run of the cards was against him, he turned his chair between every hand and so annoyed his chief that no promotion has ever come his way, and he now spends his days bitterly regretting that he did not claim that revoke.
Passing to another point, I am asked by a correspondent if it is permissible occasionally to play from left to right, instead of from right to left, just to relieve the monotony. He asks, not unreasonably, why, if this is not so, writers on Bridge go to the trouble of putting those little curved arrows to show which way round the cards are to be played.
For myself, I see no reason why the right-to-left convention should not occasionally be reversed, always provided that the whole table agrees beforehand to play in the same direction.
There are many other points to which I should like to refer, and many players to whom I should like to give a word of warning. There is the player who suddenly breaks off to join in the conversation of other people who happen to be in the room. There is the player who whistles to himself while he is playing: this is a grave fault, nor does the class of music whistled affect the question; the Preislied performed through the teeth is quite as exasperating as K-K-Katie. Then there is the player who breathes so hard with the exertion of the game that he blows the cards about the table. Finally there is the player who slaps the face of his or her partner. This is a mistake, however great the provocation. I have not space now to deal exhaustively with these breaches of Auction etiquette. Besides, I have to keep something in hand for future articles.
Foreman (to new hand). "What are you doin' there?"
New Hand. "Oilin' the wheelbarrow."
Foreman. "Well, just let it alone. What do you know about machinery?"