DIRECTORS’ CORNER -- February 2004

I thought that you might like a bit of light-heartedness for a change, hence I am using my Directors’ corner this time to relate two unusual incidents. Attending to each incident was made more awkward because I was both Directing and playing and quite a few minutes was needed to solve each incident.

1. I was both Directing and playing at our Club the other month when an unusual situation arose, which led to an equally unusual solution. I was called to a table by East who had immediately counted his cards and had only 12 cards; all the other three players had 13 cards. As I usually do, I had all four players count their cards again whilst I watched them with an eagle eye - no joy.

We now had a search, on the floor, under bidding boxes, and all four players standing up. I extended the same search to the four players etc at the table the board had come from - still no joy. One card disappeared into thin air!

I studied each hand separately & the missing card turned out to be the nine of spades, so I got one from a spare pack (same colour backing) & gave this to East & everything seemed lovely in the garden.

Lo and behold, as soon as I called the next move I was called to East at the table the same board had been passed to. He had 14 cards and two cards (the nine of spades) were identical! East’s face was a picture & the table thought that it was hilarious and the word "magic was mentioned.

The cards were fairly new, but it turned out that the original nine of spades was really sticky & had got attached behind another card. Could this have resulted from players eating sticky chocolate etc biscuits at the table?

2. Strangely enough, it was not many days after the incident above occurred that I had another unusual event to attend to. Again, I was both playing and Directing and it was a heat of a Simultaneous Pairs competition. I handed out three boards to each table & stopped at every individual table to also say "do not shuffle and do not start". Before I reached table 9, the cry came of "Director please" from one of the earlier tables.

One of the players, who has played in numerous previous Simultaneous pairs events, had taken the cards out of the board and started to shuffle them ! This was done before the other three players at the table had time to react.

Because I was playing, I could not myself use the curtain card/travelling score sheet to correctly re-deal the board. Needless to say, there was no one else in the room or building other than participating players.

Fortunately, we had a half table with an east/west sit out at table ten. It was not too difficult to work out which east/west pair would be sat out when this board was at table ten & would not play the board. They re-dealt the board for me. Failing this, I would have had to void the board at its first table and got the players there to re-deal it. An average plus and an average minus would also have been awarded.