Jan
29

The Replacement

The sheer number of bridge books in existence is pretty remarkable. My own collection has swollen to over 130 titles and that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. What I find particularly difficult to believe is that there is actually a whole sub-genre of bridge-themed mystery novels. I’m a thoroughgoing bridge addict with a longstanding crush on the character of one Sherlock Holmes and I still can’t muster any interest in such a thing. The only bridge mystery that I have any interest in solving is the motives of anyone who would want to play with the likes of me.

At least the Mad Scientist’s motives are perfectly clear, he wants someone to experiment on and use to test drive new conventions. I am his guinea pig, though I have reason to suspect he may soon be replacing me with an actual guinea pig. Yesterday at the club I could have sworn I saw a pair of beady little eyes staring out at me from beneath the Mad Scientist’s bidding box. Once while I was playing a hand I even heard a little snuffling coming from that side of the table, which everyone knows is the guinea pig equivalent of maniacal laughter. While Mr. Snuffles may be a better declarer and defender than me, there is one area in which I have him beat. That rodent will never be able to bid as well as me, mostly because he lacks opposable thumbs and getting the cards out of the bidding box is going to be damn near impossible without them.

Jan
27

Epic Fail

Last night my head hit the pillow containing thoughts of stealing a few more hours of sleep before I went to work. However, almost immediately it became clear to me that I would be doing no such thing and instead of seriously contemplating doing the things I needed to get done, I called the bridge club to find a partner for the evening game.

The evening games at my club are small, usually only two or three tables. I particularly like playing IMPs and for a long time I mostly played in those small games so I feel at home in that setting. Last night, I was lucky that one of my favorite people to play with was available. It was only two tables, so the format is three 8-board matches. Often, one ends up with three pairs winning two of the three matches, and the victory points are used to sort out 1st & 2nd so my goal in these two table games is always a clean sweep, winning all three matches. I bid and played fairly well, for once, but the crucial third match (when teamed with the pair who had not won either of the first two matches) was won by my partner who made an over-trick playing in 4♦ doubled and vulnerable. There’s a reasons she’s one of my favorite partners.

This morning did not get off to an auspicious start. I awoke to the alarm going off and the time on the clock alerted me to the fact that I had managed to hit the snooze button, not once, but twice without registering the fact that the alarm had gone off at all. I put on my new “Epic Fail” t-shirt and headed off to the club with just enough time to stop for a large iced-coffee. Too bad the caffeine wasn’t nearly enough to save me (or the Mad Scientist) from myself.

Things got off to a bumpy start. In the first round I was still thinking as if I were playing IMPs and opted to take a sacrifice in diamonds only after the opponents bid game in spades when I should have jumped to five right away. The do make four spades which is good news, but I wasn’t putting them to much of a guess as to whether or not they should double or bid five (which does not make). Two rounds later I would double a vulnerable three-spade contract that would go on to make an over-trick when I had enough information from the auction to know better, a bad board to be sure, but not a catastrophe at matchpoints.

It wasn’t until the fourth round that I made the absolute stupidest play that I’ve made in a very long time (and that’s really saying something considering some of the blunders I’ve made just this week). The opponents do their thing (1♥-1♠-2♦-All Pass) and I end up on lead looking at:

♠ Txxx
♥ xxxx
♦ K
♣ KJxx

I would have liked to have led a diamond on the auction, but the chance is just too high that my stiff king will score a trick. I opt for a low spade instead. The dummy comes down with something like:

♠ A98xx
♥ Q
♦ JTx
♣ xxxx

The declarer plays a low spade, my partner wins the queen of spades and returns the deuce of diamonds. Declarer plays low from his hand and I win my stiff king (hooray!). Now what do I know about the spade suit? I know that partner does not have the jack and that the declarer does not have the king, which means my partner started with the KQ of spades and declarer, Jx. And so I, of course, return the … ten of spades.

There were at that moment eleven cards in my hand and I picked the absolute worst return I could possibly make, a blind goldfish would have done better. They shouldn’t just revoke my Life Master status, but my driver’s license too because clearly I have not one damn ounce of sense. The Mad Scientist took it very well, though he did mutter something about a banana so I think he’s back to wanting to trade me in for a monkey (trained or not). Yin would have screamed bloody murder and quite possibly walked out of the club altogether if I had done that playing with him. I still can hardly believe it myself. Later, after the game, I found myself wandering around the grocery store in a daze with two items in my hand-basket and not a damn clue what else I needed to buy because all I could think was, “I can’t believe I returned the ten of spades. What the $%*! is wrong with me?” — a question, no doubt, being asked a lot these days.

Jan
25

The Dark Side

It occurs to me that perhaps keeping a public record of what a terrible bridge player I am is not a brilliant idea. That said I shall begin by saying that of the six hands I played during a team match last night, I played two of them like a rock star winning 6 and 10 IMPS respectively. Of the other four, three were pushes and then there was that last one where I went for -1100 losing 12 IMPS. The less said about that one the better, but I might claim it was a state of the match kind of a bid (Yin would have several, more colorful terms for it). On a related note, I’m pretty sure Yin will never speak to me again, which might prove a bit awkward as we’re supposed to play later today.

Another hand on which he and I did not see eye to eye is the following. In first seat, vul. against vul., I pick up:

♠ AT
♥ T
♦ AKT9
♣ AJTxxx

The bidding went:

1♣-(2♠)-X-(3♠)-
?

I’ll go ahead and ruin the suspense and say here that Yin does not think I should bid at this point. I, however, never even considered passing because I’m pretty sure we’re making five of a minor and I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a minor suit slam.

1♣-(2♠)-X-(3♠)-
4♦-(P)-4♥-(P)-
???

I have no idea what that 4♥ bid should mean after the initial negative double, but I finally decided that with my 4♦ bid clearly showing extra it was essentially a sign-off and the initial double was really showing long(ish) hearts without enough points to make the forcing bid on the three-level. So I passed and that’s where it was played, off two. Yin was not a happy camper because three spades would go down at least two and, had I passed, he would have doubled them (this time for penalty?). Since he was trying to make the point that my hand was very defensively oriented due to all the aces and kings, I opted not to mention that had I in a very uncharacteristic moment passed 3♠ initially and he then doubled again, I almost certainly would have bid again. I did say that those 6-4-2-1 hands just never strike me as defensive, and he looked at me like I was a complete idiot (considering that this conversation was taking place immediately after I went for -1100, I wouldn’t have argued that particle point).

Update:

In the cold light of day I have to say that a so-called “balance of power” double might have been better than 4♦, I don’t like giving up on the possible minor suit slam, but at least it wouldn’t suggest a tolerance for hearts.

Jan
23

The Talking Cure

Yesterday when I walked into the bridge club, almost immediately my teacher stopped what he was saying to his class to tell me that he had installed a couch in the back in case I needed to lie down and talk. Clearly, he had checked the scores from the day before. I said I’d have to book him for at least three hours. He offered to bring the Mad Scientist in for a joint session, but I figured TMS would probably need three hours of his own just to vent about me. Suffices to say, I played the first seven boards and managed to get us a zero on four of them. It didn’t help that I couldn’t get The Rainbow Connection out of my head, “Have you been half asleep? And have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name.” Of course, in at least one case, the voices I was hearing were those of the opponents trashing me as soon as I walked away from the table (people seem to forget that not everyone in a bridge club is losing their hearing); and, let’s face it, it wasn’t as if I’d just given them a bad board.

During that last session we had a somewhat complicated auction utilizing the Mad Scientist’s system (it comes up so rarely that it was notable just for that reason alone) which enabled me to thoroughly describe my hand so that when TMS eventually put us in 3NT, he was not guessing that it was the right spot (he may have been wondering if I knew what the hell I was doing, but that’s another story). Of course, everyone else got to 3NT too, no doubt by way of a much simpler auction. On the bright side, had 6♦ or 4♠ been the right contract our maddening methods would have gotten us there, while everyone else would have been in … 3NT. I don’t know if the opponents were at all impressed when my dummy was precisely what TMS had said it would be when explaining the alerts (and it was pretty damn specific), but I was impressed that the system worked so well. Still it was a struggle just to get to an average result; it was that kind of a day.

Yesterday the results were better, but it was still a struggle. In this case, I was mostly wrestling with a system I know, but that I don’t really get. We’re playing a weak NT and whenever one opens 1♣ or 1♦ it is either a strong NT (15-17 HCP) or an unbalanced hand that is likely to be weak. That’s all fine. The part that throws me is the rebid by opener when there is competition. With no fit and no interference, rebidding 1NT with the big hand and 2♣/♦ with the weak, shapely hand makes perfect sense. But here’s a hand from yesterday:

♠ xx
♥ AQxx
♦ xx
♣ KQTxx

It seems pretty clear to me that this hand should be opened (especially at favorable vulnerability) and that it is better opened 1♣ than 1NT. So the auction went:

1♣-(1♦)-X-(1♠)-
?

Partner had made it very clear that any bid including raising hearts or passing at this juncture would show the 15-17 NT type hand so my only option was to bid 2♣ which goes against every instinct I have. Not surprisingly the bidding continued:

1♣-(1♦)-X-(1♠)-
2♣- All Pass

And, of course, I end up playing in the 5-1 club fit instead of the 4-4 heart fit. Regardless of the fact that 2♣ made giving us a top (other pairs were in 3♥ off one), and partner confirmed after the fact that my bid was systemically correct, 2♣ just isn’t where I want to play that hand.

On an unrelated note, when I first came across a reference to 5-suited bridge I was immediately intrigued. The possibilities for the extra bidding room are particularly interesting to me. Recently on eBay I won an auction for a “Royal” suit that was produced to be added to a regular deck of cards specifically for the purpose of playing five-suited bridge:

Royal Suit for Five-Suited Bridge

I think these are pretty neat. Of course now I want to track down a deck of cards produced by that company with the same back as these, even though I’m not likely to ever play with them, in part because doing so will help me narrow down just when these might have been produced. The work of a collector is never done.

Speaking of bridge oddities, for the bridge hostess who has everything:

I know what you’re thinking, “Are those 80 year old sugar cubes shaped like playing card symbols?” Yes, yes they are.

Jan
21

On a Winter’s Day

You win battles by knowing the enemy’s timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect. – Miyamoto Musashi

The car gave up the ghost in Winchester and no amount of cursing or coaxing would convince it do otherwise. Three hours and $140 later, I was hugging the hair-pin curves through the picturesque gash of Harper’s Ferry. The radio fought to keep a bead on “California Dreamin’” and my cell phone had dropped signal long ago. It occurred to me that there — with the tight two lanes and minimal shoulder, rock face festooned with frozen waterfalls immediately to my right and sudden drop leading to the Shenandoah off toward the left — well, that would have been a much worse place to find myself stranded. Timing is everything.

Like a lot of people I struggle with timing at the bridge table. There are subtle ways, a seemingly innocuous opening lead giving the declarer enough breathing room to make a close contract; and, not so subtle ways, failing to cash an ace at what will turn out to be the one and only opportunity. Surprisingly often during the post hand analysis I see the issue of timing disregarded altogether and I’ve committed that tiny error more than once myself.

The issue of the number of tricks that are available to either side fluctuating through-out the life cycle of a hand is a fascinating one. As the hand record is all too quick to note, with perfect defense and play, there is only one number of tricks available to either side in a given contract. However, imperfect beings that we are, the results at the table are more complicated than that and, as illustrated by this entry, it’s difficult to come up with a useful, coherent exploration of the subject.

Unfortunately my detour via tow truck to downtown Winchester prevented me from getting to visit the National Museum of Civil War Medicine as I had planned. Speaking of Civil War medicine, I think leading toward a singleton king should be known as an amputation coupe.

Jan
19

Missing Piece

Did you hear the one about the bridge player who lost (the rest of) her mind when she spent three days working on jigsaw puzzles instead of playing bridge? For reasons I can’t quite comprehend my family seems to enjoy jigsaw puzzles, it’s as if they have some mutant recessive “busy work” gene that skipped me. However, most of my family members accept, with minimal complaint, that my version of quality time involves sitting in the same room as someone else while reading a book, so I try to meet them halfway and I help with the jigsaw puzzles (then I go back to my book). Sensing my lack of interest they usually just assign me a task like, “See if you can turn all these white pieces into those snow drifts.” This trip I thought I would be clever and I brought a puzzle with me that I thought would be somewhat less tedious than usual.

Unfortunately for me two things obtained. First off, there was quite possibly the most annoying puzzle I’ve ever confronted just barely underway when I arrived. It was shaped like an antique sewing machine (no straight edges!) and filled with a hazy picture of a dull-faced woman dressed in Victorian garb and sewing a quilt while surrounded by Victorian fluffery, and more quilts and two kittens playing with a basket of yarn. There were lots of pastel colors. The pieces were all kinds of weird shapes, many of which did not truly connect to the pieces around it … like the piece that was just a circle approximately 3/4 of an inch in diameter. This puzzle was created by a sadist who knew her market. Secondly, when we finished the damnable sewing machine puzzle, I discovered that the mostly primary colors and pop-art aesthetic of the puzzle featuring vintage Coca-Cola advertising that I brought with me served to make it no less tedious than the typical puzzle (though it is far less tedious than the aforementioned abominable kittens playing with yarn in a pile of quilts puzzle).

An aside, were one to eavesdrop on two people working on a puzzle one could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into the lair of a couple of serial killers, “I think this is part of her face and this hand might belong to that guy over there, but it’s so hard to tell when they’re all in pieces like this.”

But is a desire to spend hours moving tiny pieces around until they form a bigger picture really all that different from wanting to move playing cards around to see what sort of pattern they come out in next? Yes, it’s completely different.

Jan
16

Withdrawal

I’m off to Virginia for a few days. It won’t exactly be a break from bridge since I have a couple of books I want to take with me (including The Rodwell Files) and I’ll be taking my laptop along primarily so I can finish up the class notes I’ve been working on concerning bidding in competition. (The wide-eyed look I got from most of the class when someone asked a question about raising their partner’s overcall and I mentioned cue-bidding left me thinking I probably ought to start from the beginning.) Still, because I can hardly help myself, I poked around on the ACBL site to see just what was available bridge club wise. The entire state has a dearth of full time bridge clubs and in many cases scary terms like “semi-monthly” can be found lurking in the listings. It occurs to me that perhaps my dream of one day running away to live in relative isolation in the Blue Ridge mountains may have a fatal flaw.

Jan
15

The Mean Reds

Most of the time as I make my way to the bridge club I’m thinking something to the effect of: “Today’s the day it’s going to come together for me and I’m going to stop making really stupid mistakes.” Then, shortly into the first round, I come face to face with the cold realization that while it may happen one day, it won’t be that day. Considering how often I play, this shows a tremendous ability to maintain belief despite all evidence to the contrary. Who knew I had such capacity for blind faith?

The hard part is keeping the inevitable disappointment at my own failings from leaking into the second round and the third and so on. The cards have no memory from one hand to the next and ideally nor should we. A single stupid mistake will suffice to shove me off the rails and, lately, I’ve been really struggling to get back on track. My regular partners have all witnessed this at various points and I’m sure it’s frustrating for them to sense that the initial injury is about to be compounded many times over. I do try to keep my head in the game, but it just gets uglier and uglier. While in this mode I’m quick to apologize, but that gets old too. I know I’m really in trouble once they fall into tight-lipped silence.

On Friday after I’d already had some pretty spectacular screw-ups, I played one particular hand as if I had never even seen a bridge hand played before, much less played one myself. My partner said not a word, there were so many bad plays contained within those thirteen tricks that I’m sure he couldn’t even imagine where to begin. I’m not at all certain I could have gone down more if I’d tried. On the next hand, after a brief push and pull in the bidding he ended up in 3NT. As I put down the dummy I commented that, were I in his position, I wouldn’t let me play another hand either, his response, “I say nothing.”

Sadly, Friday was a breeze compared to Saturday. I don’t honestly remember precisely when things started to go wrong, like the aforementioned hand, there were so many mistakes I couldn’t possibly know where to begin, but by the end of the day I could do nothing right. On one hand I passed a forcing bid, stopping short of game, and, as if to drive home the point, I played the hand well enough to have made an overtrick in game despite a nasty trump break. Ironically, that turned out to be a top, I can only wonder what happened at the other tables. On another hand, I botched the bidding after partner made a reverse bid and ended up down three in 3NT instead of down one in 3♣ with the rest of the field. On another hand I forgot that systems are on after a 2♣ overcall of 1NT (a mistake I’ve made in the past) and tried to sign off in 2♠, imagine my surprise when it was instead announced as a transfer to clubs and then even once I was off the hook, I still chose to bid 3♠ — it wasn’t pretty. On another hand, I failed to recognize a bid as asking me to “pick a minor” and took it as showing a stopper in the opponents’ suit. And on another hand, I took an opponent’s bid as asking for a stopper instead of showing a stopper, I should have asked before making the opening lead, but I didn’t and then, not surprisingly, I completely botched the defense giving them not just one, but two overtricks. At least I gave the opponents something to feel smug and superior about. These weren’t just errors in judgement, but the sort of thing that should be completely avoidable at this point.

Early on when I was first learning the game and things were coming relatively easily to me, I concluded that I didn’t want to even bother playing bridge unless I could do it at a high level. I’m no longer so sure I have the capacity for that, and that worries me because I’m not ready to quit either. Certainly if I do want to throw down with the big boys some day, in addition to everything else, I have to come up with some way to recover and fight back instead of slipping into taciturn desolation over my own stupidity. It also might help to not be so stupid, but that goes without saying doesn’t it? Oh well, maybe today’s the day.

Jan
12

“Why you little …!”

The other day I was playing with a pick-up partner at the club. The opponents sat down and the woman turned to me and said, “No one has as much fun playing bridge together as you and [the Mad Scientist]. You two are just always laughing.” I laughed. I wondered if I ought to explain that most of the laughter is a result of our my completely screwing up on yet another auction. He’s laughing as a means of restraining himself from strangling me á la Bart and Homer Simpson. I’m laughing because I laugh when I get nervous and I’m worried he might, well, strangle me:

Nowadays whenever I play at the club no matter who I am playing with it seems like at least one opponent is going to grill me about our system, “You’re not playing any of that weird stuff you play with [TMS] are you?” There was a point when I would have had to respond that it depended on their definition of “weird”, I mean, criss-cross inverted minors are kind of weird. But nowadays even the nominally weird conventions are gone and almost nothing I play system-wise with TMS crosses over into my other partnerships, though I wish some of it would. I suppose it’s official, I am the Mad Scientist’s Igor, me and my “Abby Normal” brain:

Undeterred TMS continues to slave away in his laboratory. We’ve been playing a borrowed Modified Puppet Stayman (very similar to Muppet Stayman), the notes for which took up the whole of one page. It took several tries for us to work the kinks out of that one over the course of a couple months (it just didn’t come up that often) and now that we have we’re replacing it with his version of Marionette Stayman the notes for which take up thirteen pages. We may work the kinks out of it too one day approximately five years from now.

And then there’s the seven pages on responses after a 1NT opening. It certainly resembles Stayman and Jacoby transfers, like holding them up to a funhouse mirror. That one … may never get straightened out. In his eMail TMS called it “annoying” and I … haven’t called it anything because shortly after I get to the second page my eyes start to cross, there’s a peculiar throbbing sensation somewhere in my temporal lobe and then I pass out only to awaken with no memory of what I’d read.

Jan
09

Cheaters never prosper, except when they do.

The game of bridge has a long storied history of cheating scandals. There have been entire books written on various incidents, Accusation of a Scandal by Terrence Reese is particularly good, but disquieting because there are such well respected people on both sides of that set of allegations.

The ACBL rules even have distinctions between so-called “hard cheating” and “soft cheating”. (There is an excellent discussion of that fuzzy concept here.)

There seem to be a lot of accusations tossed around in a bridge club, mostly involving “unauthorized information”. Most of the time I think when someone has taken advantage of a bit of U.I. it is subconscious, but I’m a firm believer in the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” and so I find myself giving people the benefit of the doubt. (Either that or I’m not convinced that the average cheater is smart enough to really take advantage of such flimsy data consciously.) I was pretty shocked the first time I witnessed an U.I. call in part because my partner was the one on whom the director was called and my hesitation was exactly and only a result of my RHO using the stop card and my sitting there and counting to ten in my head while staring at my hand just the way my teacher taught me. [An aside: I would later come to realize that most people are actually employing the stop card to alert their partner to the fact they made a jump bid (another bit of soft cheating) so nowadays I usually just count to eight.] Soon enough I realized that such calls were pretty common place, mostly just a nuisance one has to put up with to play bridge in a club with other bridge players. Bridge players just aren’t the most well-adjusted lot.

The first time I witnessed something I considered pretty iffy U.I. wasn’t until the tournament game at which I would become a Life Master (though I didn’t know that at the time). It was the first session of a two-session open pairs game. My partner and I had a pretty routine help-suit game try auction with the opponents silent through-out, I opened the bidding: 1♠-2♠-3♣*-4♠. When I bid 3♣ my LHO asked my partner what my club bid meant, he explained that it was a help-suit game try and that I was asking if he had help in that particular suit (hooray for conventions that are what they sound like). Before she made her opening lead, she asked if I could have a void or a singleton for my bid of clubs. Partner explained that I could not because that would not require any help. (To translate, she wanted to know if it was possibly for the dummy and her partner to have 11 or 12 clubs between them and for me to be the one saying I had something in clubs but needed help with it.) My RHO won the opening lead, cashed her ace of clubs (dummy had Kx) and then led another club which her partner trumped. That was all very suspect, but I failed to call the director because I didn’t think there was any way I could prove what I knew had just happened. There were a few minutes to spare at the end of the round so without saying anything to the opponents I went to the director to explain the situation/ I knew he couldn’t do anything to help me at that point (and, of course, he said that I should have called him at the time), but I wanted there to be some record of something fishy going on with that pair just in case they tried it again with someone who called the director right away.

Which brings me to the stalls in the restroom at my local club which leave something to be desired privacy wise. There are gaps between the walls and the doors, or, to put it another way, it’s easy to tell if the stall is occupied. A couple of months ago between rounds, in the middle of a game I walked into the restroom and through one such gap could clearly see someone standing inside the stall, reading a hand record.

This struck me as profoundly strange. I keep a lot of hand-records, typically I staple them to my score sheet from that day. I look at them often, some of them weeks or even months later, but I don’t think I have ever looked at an old hand record while in the midst of playing a game of bridge. Even if there was a hand I wanted to talk to my partner about from a previous session, I’d do it before or after the current one. Even if we had a sit-out, I would hesitate to bring up a problematic hand because we’d still be in the middle of a game. I certainly wouldn’t be studying a hand record during a game just for my own edification. Mostly in my ample downtime during a game at the club (I may not be good, but I’m fast) I like to play Angry Birds, something about as far removed from bridge as I can get. The point is while I know not everyone is like me in this respect, it sent up a big red flag.

I washed my hands then I left the restroom and waited to see who came out just to make sure it was who I thought it was. Once I had confirmed her identity (and noted that she was not carrying a hand record when she exited), I went back into the restroom and took a look around to see if I could find the hand record in the trash or something (plus I still hadn’t gotten around to my original purpose for visiting in the first place). Not surprisingly, I found no hand record. It’s a good thing I play fast because for once I was the one holding up the works at my table.

I noticed through-out the rest of the day, and on subsequent occasions, that this particular woman took frequent, extended trips to the bathroom. I said nothing about my suspicions because this was the extent of my admittedly circumstantial evidence: I saw her reading a hand record in a bathroom stall, she takes a lot of breaks and she comes in first or second much of the time. She could just be a good player with an inexhaustible thirst for bridge and a small bladder. Not exactly an open-and-shut case, especially since I couldn’t figure out how she might have gotten her hands on that day’s hand record before the fact. I’d never seen them lying around ahead of time. I know the cards are dealt by a computer program that then generates said records and I could come up with an elaborate explanation that involved hacking the program, but it seemed unlikely. The point is that there was nothing there that was worth repeating to anyone; I needed something more concrete.

Then I got a chance to sit at Table #1 which is not a seeding thing, it just so happened I was playing with the owner. As she was setting up the game on the computer, I noticed that she brought up a screen I did not recognize and then the printer in the small office, actually more of a supply closet, whirred to life and started spitting out multiple pages. These then were the hand records, hot off the press and we hadn’t even begun to play yet. The door to that office is open most of the time (apparently the lock is damaged) but there is almost no reason for a player to go in there. Having noted that this woman about whom I had my suspicions was there, in fact she was the first one I saw when I came in the door, I immediately wondered if this then was how she was getting her hands on the hand records.

Sure enough moments after they were printed and almost immediately before the first round was to begin, this snake “wandered” into the office/closet and straight to the printer. The owner had stepped away, but was nearby. I said, “What are you doing? Those are today’s hand records.” I said it loudly enough that the owner would hear me. The woman said that she thought they were the previous day’s records. The owner pointed out that she hadn’t played the previous day. She seemed flustered and confused and offered no explanation for why she needed to go into the office in the first place. She went back to her table seemingly empty-handed (yes, some snakes do have hands). Later when I got a moment alone with the owner, I talked to her about printing the records ahead of time and the previous strange encounter I had with this woman in the bathroom. It might not hold up in a court of law, but as far as I am concerned this was not a coincidence and she has been cheating. There isn’t a happy ending here of course, no justice has been served, no banishment to the hinterlands of party bridge, where they don’t even have Stayman much less hand records, has taken place. And while this “close call” may be just the impetus she needs to either reform or improve her cheating ways, I’ll still be watching, and hopefully now the owner will be too (or at least not printing the hand records until after the last round is underway).