The Cardturner (9 page)

"Congratulations," he said to her. "You just earned your first masterpoint."

She beamed.

It wasn't actually a full masterpoint. For coming in fifth, she had earned .29 masterpoints. That's 29/100 of a point. Yet from the look on her face, you would have thought she'd just become a Life Master.

"Nice game, partner," said Trapp.

"Thank you, partner," said Toni.

I wanted to throw up.

Trapp told me to go fetch boards eleven and twenty-three. He didn't actually say the word
fetch,
but that was how it felt to his trained monkey.

I had to sit around for at least another half an hour while they went over the two boards. "I led the five of hearts and you played the queen."

Toni scrunched up her freckled nose. "I did?"

"Yes. You should have played the jack. It might not have seemed like there was any difference whether you played the jack or queen, but when you played the queen, you were telling me you didn't have the jack. Remember, good defense requires teamwork. Every card you play gives information to your partner."

By the way, even though I had to wait around an extra thirty minutes, I still only got paid seventy-five dollars.

22
The Blind Lady Bowler

I was still in a bad mood when I got home, and I took it out on my mother. "You can forget about Uncle Lester leaving us any money," I said, hitting her where it hurt. "Guess who his bridge partner was today?"

She already knew about it, having talked with Mrs. Mahoney.

"She's his protégée," I said.

"It's part of her homeschooling," said my mother. "That's all. I wouldn't worry too much about it. She'll do something crazy and that will be the end of that."

"She seemed normal enough to me," I said. "A little nervous, maybe. She knocked over her bidding box."

My mother nodded knowingly, then said, "You can bet she was heavily medicated."

"She's really pathetic," I told Cliff. "She pretends to be all interested in bridge—‘Gee, you're so smart, Trapp, why didn't I think of that'—when really all she's doing is sucking up to him so he'll leave her a bunch of money in his will."

"I thought that's what you were doing," said Cliff.

We were at the country club pool. Cliff had come down off his lifeguard perch and was sitting on the edge of my lounge chair. I had signed in as Robert Mays, a country club member who, according to Cliff, was vacationing in New Zealand.

I hadn't told Cliff about my father losing his job. For some reason I felt ashamed.

"Check out the diving board," Cliff said.

A girl in a pink bikini stood at the far end of the diving board. She shook her hair back, smiled at us—well, at Cliff—then raised herself up on her toes, took two steps, bounced, and dived into the pool.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Cliff said. "You'll like this. There was this blind lady bowler on the news the other day. She'd been in a car accident, but before that she'd always been this great bowler. They showed her bowling. Her husband got her all set up, and then she took three steps and rolled the ball down the alley. At first it looked like the ball was headed straight for the gutter, and I thought, you know,
Well, big deal, what's so great about that?
but then, when it was an inch away from being a gutter ball, it suddenly curved back and hit smack in the center of the pins for a perfect strike."

"Great," I said, without a whole lot of enthusiasm.

"Everyone was all excited," Cliff said, "not only the people on TV, but at my house watching it. Katie had tears in her eyes."

"Katie?" I asked, trying to keep my voice at an even pitch.

"Sorry," he said.

"No, it's fine," I said.

"Really, she was just leaving," he said, as if that was supposed to remove the sting. "My dad had the news on, and we stopped to watch."

"It's no big deal," I said. "I'm glad you and Katie are together. Better she's with you than some jerk."

The girl in the pink bikini climbed out of the pool and passed right in front of us, this time not looking at Cliff, content that he was watching her.

"She's like fourteen years old," I pointed out.

He blew his whistle and yelled at some kids to quit running.

"You got to admit," he said, "bowling a perfect strike is more amazing than just memorizing a few cards."

Not that there's a contest to see who the most amazing blind person is, but I don't admit that. A bowler does the same thing every time. The same three steps. The same arm motion. It's muscle memory.

Every bridge hand is different. I looked it up on the Internet. There are 635,013,559,600 possible bridge hands. And those are just the cards one person holds. There are 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000 possible deals, each one a unique puzzle.

Trapp had to memorize every card in his hand and in the dummy, while at the same time keeping track of every card the opponents played. Hand after hand after hand.

Don't get me wrong. I was happy for the blind bowler. I watched her bowl her strike on YouTube. She was inspirational.

All I'm saying is, I bet she's better at strikes than spares.

23
Bidding

Leslie asked me to explain bidding to her, and it's about time I explained it to you, too, because on Saturday Gloria told us that Trapp had been cleared to play in the sectional tournament with me as his cardturner.

You probably already noticed there's a whale coming up, so you can skip this part if you want, but I think you should at least give it a try.

You already know about trump. If you can't follow suit, you can play a trump card and win the trick. So it's good to hold a hand with lots of trump cards. If spades were trump, you would want a hand with lots of spades.

That's what the bidding is all about.

Bidding is like an auction. The highest bid decides which suit is trump.

You always add six to whatever you bid. So if you bid one heart, you're saying you can take seven tricks if hearts are trump. If you bid two hearts, you're saying you can take eight tricks.

The highest you can bid is seven. If you do, you're saying you will take all thirteen tricks.

The suits are ranked in the same order I always give them to Trapp. Spades is the highest-ranked suit, then hearts, diamonds, and clubs.

So let's say somebody bids one heart. Maybe the next player has lots of spades in his hand, so he might bid one spade. He only has to bid at the one-level, because spades are ranked higher than hearts. But if instead he had lots of diamonds, he'd have to bid two diamonds, because diamonds are a lower-ranked suit than hearts.

The bidding proceeds clockwise around the table. A typical auction might go like this:

North: One heart. (I have a good hand and at least five hearts.)

East: One spade. (Well, I've got a pretty good hand too, with at least five spades.)

South: Two hearts. (I've got some hearts to go along with my partner's hearts.)

West: Three clubs. (To hell with all of you! I've got a boatload of clubs.)

North: Pass. (Even though I still like hearts, I don't want to bid at the three-level. I'm not sure we can take nine tricks.)

East: Pass.

South: Three hearts. (I'm willing to take a chance.)

West: Pass.

North: Pass.

East: Pass.

The bidding ends when there are three passes in a row.

For simplicity's sake, that auction would be written like this:

The final
contract
is three hearts. Hearts are trump, and North has to take a total of nine tricks (three plus six). If he succeeds, his side will score some points. That's called
making his contract
. If he fails, the other side will score some points. That's called
setting the contract
.

Since North was the first person to bid hearts, he plays the hand. He is known as the
declarer
. His partner, South, becomes the dummy.

As in other sports, there are an offense and a defense. The defenders in bridge try to prevent the declarer from making his contract, just like a football team tries to prevent the other side from scoring a touchdown.

There is a fifth suit I haven't mentioned: no-trump. No-trump is ranked higher than spades.

So the bidding could go:

No-trump means what it says. If the final contract is one no-trump, then no suit is trump. There are no wild cards. If you can't follow suit, all you can do is discard.

There are two additional bids I haven't mentioned yet:
double
and
redouble
. In the bidding box, the double card is red, with a large white
X
. The redouble card is blue, with
XX
.

If you double, you're saying you think your opponents bid too high. If they make their contract, they'll get double the points, but if you set them, then you'll get double the points.

I hadn't seen anyone use the redouble card yet, but I suppose it increases the number of points at risk. Leslie put it this way: a double card says "No way!" and a redouble card says "Way!"

One last thing about bidding, and this has to do with keeping score. You don't always want to bid as cheaply as possible. You get a big bonus if you bid
game.

To bid game in hearts or spades, you have to bid at least four, 4
or 4
. They're called the
major suits
. To bid game in diamonds or clubs, you have to bid at the five-level, 5
or 5
. They're called the
minor suits
. You only need to bid 3NT to be
in game
in no-trump. That makes sense, since it is harder to win tricks when there are no wild cards.