FROM THE
DIRECTOR’S TABLE. -- October 2004
It is so easy to inadvertently pick up bad habits at the bridge table & this gave me the idea to use this memo to comment on three specific ones. It is probable that you or your partner are never “guilty” of such lapses, but please bear with me as I expand on my theme.
Players often comment to me on practices that, rightly or wrongly, they tell me they have observed at the table. When several players refer to the same pair or the same (illegal) practice, then a more solid picture begins to emerge.
Two such practices have been mentioned to me, both taking place during the bidding, and I pass them on to you. The first occurs when both members of a pair are bidding and one of them, immediately after putting down a bidding card from the bidding box, looks up with a stare at his partner. A variation of this is when one member of a pair makes a bid and his partner looks up directly at him with a grimace on his face. In both cases, because of the action of staring or grimacing at partner, unauthorised information is being passed to partner and, what is more, it is being passed in an illegal way.
A somewhat similar, illegal way of drawing partner’s attention may occur as a bidding card is being laid down. What happens is that a bidding card is drawn out of the bidding box and instead of being placed on the table in the usual manner & the usual speed, it is tilted towards partner as it is placed down or it is held onto a little longer as it is placed on the table. Difficult to explain but easy to observe when it happens.
My final comment has nothing to do with the bidding. It was done at my table some time ago and it concerns the play of a singleton. My opponent played a card rather slowly & it seemed as if he was making a choice of which card to play in that suit. At the end of the round it turned out that when he played the card, he had only the one card in the suit. There was just a chance that he was thinking about other aspects of the play but, even so, it is essential that he plays the singleton at his usual speed. To do anything else is against the spirit of the game and may also disadvantage his opponent.
Peter Dawson (October 2004)