Jun
30

Vexation

The very first hand was an ill portent. When the hand was over, my partner and I slipped our hands back into the board, pushed away from the table and I said, “Well, thanks partner, that was fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The opponents were too stunned to prevent us from leaving. Or, anyway, that’s what should have happened.

Two tricks into the first board I was convinced I knew what my next entry for this ‘blog would be about, but the remaining boards contained such a vast array of frustration and general stupidity that by the end of day I could no longer tell, nor much care, what to write about.

The best thing I can say about the session is that on two hands where twelve tricks turned out to be available for the taking (on a finesse or a suit splitting kindly), we were the only pair that even explored the possibility of a slam. Which is to say we were the only pair in five making six. No difference in score, of course, but we deserve a cookie or something.

Perhaps surprisingly, the worst thing was the opponent who asked dummy to run a long suit and then spent thirty seconds to a minute deciding what to discard … on every single trick. Certainly finding discards wasn’t going to be a cakewalk for anyone on that hand, but it was torture watching her agonize over each and every card, taking one out of her hand, putting it back in and then on one trick she failed to notice that I had already played to the trick so that one took even longer. And then when it was all over she still blocked herself out of her hand. By the end I was ready to scream, “For f_ck’s sake, I’m quite sure you could have done that without giving it any thought at all!” I might as well have considering how miffed she got at my suggestion that she could have played the hand faster. “Rude!” she said. Personally I thought it was pretty rude of her not to consolidate her ponderous pondering, I mean, what was she doing over there? Maybe she was mentally rehearsing her lines for a community production of Richard the III or trying to come up with the names of all seven dwarves (that’s what I do when I need to look like I’m deep in thought, but am really not). Clearly she wasn’t thinking about what she should be discarding.

One interesting issue that came up was: what happens if one realizes they have revoked after the hand is over and the opponents have not caught on? While some people might see this as an ethically ambiguous issue, my teacher was unequivocal when he said that the correct thing to do was to say nothing. The reason being that admitting that one has revoked will automatically give the opponents a good score, likely a top, thereby punishing all of the other pairs sitting the same direction as them.

So when I noticed a revoke and said nothing, I thought I was doing the right thing. Then my partner caught on to the error and corrected it. The opponents were, of course, very grateful and gracious about it, and it wasn’t as if our game could possibly get any worse. Still while it wasn’t fair for them to get a bad score due to the misplay, it wasn’t fair to the other pairs sitting the same direction to get a bad score due to the correction. There is no mechanism built in for simply restoring the score to par if one is caught in a revoke by ones own admission. Perhaps the rules should be changed so that when one catches ones own revoke after a hand is played the score is only adjusted to what one would have made had the revoke not occurred. A deterrence factor would still exist because if the opponent catches the revoke the usual penalty would still apply.

After the game I stumbled out into the heat and realized that there was zero chance of my being able to sleep. It was too hot and I was too agitated. I decided to seek respite in the dark chill of a movie theater and went to go see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. It was everything one could want from a film of that title. I can’t wait for the sequel, Harriet Tubman: Zombie Slayer.

Unrelated to the above, circumstances beyond my control have pickled my plans for the upcoming NABC. I feel a little sick just thinking about it mostly because Doc had made plans (replete with airline tickets and hotel reservations) to come out for the week and we had been planning on playing most days together. He’s being very understanding about things and we’re still going to try to play as much as possible. I’ve offered to put him together with some of my partners so that he wouldn’t be playing roulette with the partnership desk. I told him that if he was up for an adventure he could play with a couple of the bright beginners that I play with, his response was enthusiastic, “I am more than willing to play with some bright beginners. After all, that was how we met.” And partners like him are what make this game tolerable.

Feb
04

A Bridge (Entry) too Far

I arrived at the club just shy of half an hour before the game yesterday. The owner, who was running the game, seemed a bit harried as she attempted to track down a decent partner for a very good player. I offered to give Yin a call to see if he might be available. In retrospect, it might not be a good idea to set him up with such a good partner. (Unfortunately for him, and perhaps fortunately for me, he was busy.)

As for the rest of the game, I chalked up three big errors in the first three rounds, but managed to shake it off for the second half and we had a good game, despite my initial generosity toward the opponents. By the end of the day though, the Mad Scientist was alerting my passes, “She only has twelve cards. No wait, that would give her another singleton. Never-mind, she would have opened that too.” Aggression tempered with judgement, well, one out of two ain’t bad. Needless to say, partnering with me requires a good sense of humor and a masochistic streak. Yin once said, “I enjoy having bad games with you more than anyone else,” which sounds about right.

Speaking of bad, has anyone else noticed that it often takes a full two rounds of bidding to correct a mistake once it has been made? You make the wrong bid on the two level and there’s no escape hatch until the four level in many cases. Maybe for those of us who are particularly error-prone we could add a “Fail” card to the bidding box, signifying that our last bid was complete f*ck up. While we’re at it, I also want a “What the hell?” card — that one will have at least two functions, one of which will be used in place of the stop card before jumping to an unscientifically estimated slam. The second, will be more of a “What the hell is going on? Is this is a pinochle deck?” bid used in place of a double.

On an unrelated note, I liked this story about the U.S. Playing Card Company replacing a collection of Bicycle® playing cards destroyed by a tropical typhoon.

Also I won another eBay auction, this time for a really terrific photograph of a very young-looking Oswald Jacoby playing in the national bridge championship held in Asbury Park, New Jersey back in 1939. Jacoby’s partner (who has his back to us) is John R. Crawford. They would win the Wernher Trophy that year. Jacoby’s RHO is none other than one Mr. Charles Goren and Goren’s partner is B. Jay Becker. I’m not convinced that the young woman in the flowered dress and white hat at the right edge of the photo isn’t Sally Young (but that might just be wishful thinking on my part). Young would go on to win the Reisinger that year (her third consecutive win) playing with B. Jay Becker, John R. Crawford, Charles Goren and Charles J. Solomon (who isn’t, as far as I know, pictured).