(_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.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _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?"]
* * * * *