Contract Bridge

Thanks for the detailed response Charlie.

Quote: SOOPOO

. Ummm.... No! You are confusing 3NT , which is generally a last bid stopping at ‘game’ from ‘Blackwood’ which is 4NT!

Blackwood is 4 NT? It has been a while since I've played (seriously - I'd say early 1980s).

Quote: ThatDonGuy

Blackwood is 4 NT? It has been a while since I've played (seriously - I'd say early 1980s).

Yes. But it can also be ‘keycard Blackwood’ as described a few posts earlier. It just has to agreed upon by the team in advance.

Quote: SOOPOO

Yes. But it can also be ‘keycard Blackwood’ as described a few posts earlier. It just has to agreed upon by the team in advance.

Yeah, unless you are very explicit with your partner beforehand, your bid of 3NT is going to be met with a pass almost every time. 4NT is what you want.

I've played Bridge with my family since I was ten, but stories like teliot's are exactly why I will never play the game at any sort of competitive level. I find the game to be very fun, and I want to keep it that way, so I'll keep it to the kitchen table.

I went to school in upstate New York in the early 70s. Most of the bridge players there were from New York City and Long Island, and the general practice was to play a hand and then one of the partners would berate the other over supposed misplays during that hand, often very loudly and using crude language. That sort of play probably wasn't limited to those geographic areas, but it was hearing all that in the New York accent that made it even worse for me personally.

I stopped playing.

Quote: Mosca

I went to school in upstate New York in the early 70s. Most of the bridge players there were from New York City and Long Island, and the general practice was to play a hand and then one of the partners would berate the other over supposed misplays during that hand, often very loudly and using crude language. That sort of play probably wasn't limited to those geographic areas, but it was hearing all that in the New York accent that made it even worse for me personally.

I stopped playing.

New Yorkers do not have accents. The rest of the world speaks funny.

Quote: Mosca

...and then one of the partners would berate the other over supposed misplays during that hand...

There are traditionally two parts to the berationing. The bidding, when a wrong bid communicated the wrong information, and then the play of the hand, usually between the person who won the bid and his partner (the "dummy") about how the declarer should have known better.

In a session with married couples, the spouses were usually at each other's throats, adding a whole other level to matrimonial strife. Surprisingly, they kept at it, returning week after week for another session at the bridge table.

Contract bridge was a regular topic in Sports Illustrated, with Charles Goren being the consensus expert. I recall there was even a Saturday afternoon syndicated show with play-by-play and state-of-the art graphics - for the 1960s.

I learned bridge in grad school and absolutely loved it. We'd play every day at lunch. A couple of my buddies also learned it, and fairly regularly two of us would go visit the local bridge club on Monday night and compete against the other folks there. Back then we were definitely the 'young whippersnappers' in a sea of white hairs, but every once in a while we'd actually win! (This is playing duplicate.)

But once I graduated and got a job, and moved, I rarely played again. So here it is, 25 years after grad school, and I still read the bridge column in the paper almost every day. Sadly, it isn't popular like it used to be. I have hopes of teaching it to my friends, but bridge isn't something you can teach people in a single evening. And these days it seems that no one wants to learn a game that takes a lot of thinking. There's a local bridge club where I live, but I hate to say that at 61yo, I'd probably still be one of the younger players.

As for me, bridge-playing is similar to art that is not common for everyone.
Not everyone could become an artist, not everyone could be a bridge player!

My brother and I took what we learned from bridge and used it to become really good at euchre. We played a game of euchre that could only be defined this way: since every transgression has a penalty attached to it, all transgressions were acceptable behavior, as long as you accepted the penalty when you were caught. So we would very commonly steal the deal for example. (Being the dealer at euchre is an extremely powerful position.) Or if you were in a tight spot and the only way out of it was to reneg, what the hell; reneg. It costs two points. Or change the score, which is kept with two cards adding to 10. Get caught, it's -2 from where you should be.

As long as everyone is playing by the same book, it is MUCH more fun this way... let the other guys steal the deal, and right before they flip the card, ask for the deal back. They reneg? Toss your hand and claim 2.

Bridge play can be applied to the play of the hand as well. I haven't played in probably 20 years, and my brother Jim passed in 2009, but we could make book out of a high bower and a side AK, plus a couple low trump opposite. It's all in when you cash.