The Cardturner (38 page)

The directors had a very specific rule for each situation. So not only were these mistakes really dumb, I realized, but they all had happened many times before.

And I've made every single one of them.

the two idiots at table seven:

It was around this point that I noticed the blond guy squirming in his chair. When Toni won the next trick, the bushy-haired guy started squirming too.

If you see an opponent squirm, that's always a tip-off that he's being squeezed. If you're ever in such a situation, try not to squirm. Try to decide on your discards before it's your turn to play, and then calmly play as if you don't have any problem. Often a declarer won't realize you're being squeezed unless your body language tells him.

"First she squeezed me out of my exit cards . . . and then she endplayed me."

An
endplay
is when a defender is put in a position of having to lead a card, but whatever card he leads will give the declarer a trick.

There are many different kinds of endplays. Here's one example. These are everybody's last two cards.

If anyone else leads a club, East will be able to win a club trick (try it). But if East is on-lead, he is endplayed. If he leads the
J, dummy's
Q will win the trick, and then the declarer will win the last trick with the
A. If instead East leads the
K, it will lose to the
A, and then the
Q will win the final trick.

So Toni (or Annabel) first squeezed him out of his
exit cards,
meaning he had to discard all the cards he could have led safely, and then she allowed him to win a trick, endplaying him in some manner.

Pages 177-78, the IMP chart:

Did you notice that as you win by larger and larger amounts, you get fewer and fewer additional IMPs? The chart is designed this way so that one peculiar hand won't decide an entire match. Rather, the winner is the team that consistently does better.

I knew what it meant to . . . pull trump.

To
pull trump
means to lead the trump suit and keep leading it until the opponents don't have any trump cards left.

Pages 218-19, Deborah in the closet:

We bridge players are unusual, to say the least. When the average male reads Deborah's story, he no doubt wishes he could have been there when she stepped out of the closet. When I read it, I wished I could have been there too, but I wanted to see that bridge diagram! If it had Trapp stumped, it must have been a very interesting hand.

the post-mortem hand:

How did Trapp know he could make four spades on this hand?

He didn't. He was dealt nine spades. Do you know what bridge players call a nine-card suit?

Trump!

I won't go through the rest of the hand. Maybe you can figure out how to take ten tricks. I did, apparently.

I've made an approximate reconstruction of the hand based on what West said afterward. Look at West's hand. It's no wonder he doubled.

Alton could only let the opponents win three tricks. When analyzing a hand, it helps to look at each suit separately.

By leading the
Q, Alton was able to lose only two spade tricks. He could afford just one other loser.