The Cardturner (36 page)

These are not errors. It has to do with something called
being vulnerable.

Just as the board indicates who is the designated dealer for each hand, it also indicates which side is vulnerable. On board number one, nobody is vulnerable. On board two, North-South is vulnerable. On board three, East-West is vulnerable. On board four, both sides are vulnerable.

If you're vulnerable and go down in a contract, you lose 100 points per trick. If you are nonvulnerable, you only lose 50 per trick. You get a bonus of 500 points for bidding and making
game
when vulnerable, and only 300 when nonvulnerable. You also get bigger bonuses for slams when vulnerable.

Duplicate players will often take the vulnerability into consideration when deciding whether to bid or pass.

Running Commentary

There were two parts to a bridge hand,
the bidding
and
the play.
. . .

There's also a third part, the
post-mortem.
That's when you try to justify all the mistakes you just made, or better yet, blame them on your partner.

the "Are you sure?" hand:

This was the spade situation described in Trapp's rant:

Put yourself in the declarer's shoes. You lead the
2. Gloria plays a small spade. You play the
K from dummy, and Trapp plays the
4.

Now you return to your hand in another suit, and lead the
3. Again, Gloria plays a small spade. What card do you play from dummy?

There's no easy answer. It all depends on the location of the
A and
J. If Gloria has the
A and Trapp has the
J, you should play dummy's queen. On the other hand (pun intended), if Gloria has the
J and Trapp has the
A, you should play dummy's ten.

How do you know? You don't.

Except earlier, when Trapp told Toni to play the
4, she asked, "Are you sure?"