I had a puzzling or perhaps funny experience the other day. We were playing matchpoints and this hand
occurred (me sitting East):
West North East South
- - Pass Pass
1♣ Pass 1♥ Pass
3♥ Pass 4♥ Pass
Pass Pass
South led a trump and due to the friendly lie of the cards
I was able to make 11 tricks for a shared top.
Next hand began and South announced that the bidding was strange.
Upon request, he/she specified that the 3H bid was strange. A bit of an
overbid, I admitted, but "you cannot argue with success". Yes, he retorted,
"but I can argue with the means used to reach this success".
And he specified that we reached this contract taking advantage of
huddles and tempo variations. Now, this seemed ridiculous to me,
but I merely answered that when playing online against people from
faraway countries tempo variations are due to bad connections and
are to be expected. In the meantime, the oppos had received another
bad score because they played an obvious slam and misguessed trumps so
lost the overtrick.
Question: assuming that 3H is made after a huddle (I did not perceive
any huddle, but let's assume it for the sake of argument) isn' my
4H bid totally obvious?
Now, South warned:
"I insist that delays and hesitations are not part of the tools of trade for bidding or play .....I'll leave this table if it happens again; make no mistake !!!"
The next board had began, and I held:
J 10 x x
A Q J
x
J x x x x
South was dealer at love all and passed. Pard opened 1D. North
overcalled 1S. What do you bid?
Well, I bid 1NT not liking very much my stopper neither the diamond
singleton but I felt I could not pass.
S bid 2D unalerted, pard doubled and this was passed out
to S who did not make a call. After a while, having already
received the sermon about huddles, I said "faster pls" whereupon
S exploded:
S: nikos59, please leave this table, NOW: ty
nikos59: why, pray tell?
S: because you are now not a quality bridge player, but a nuisance; so please leave
nikos59: We are a nuisance because we beat you?
It transpired that S had been asking privately partner
about the double, because the very next line of chat read:
S: North, I asked you for an explanation of your X; you replied "normal" ; what kind of a reply is that for a bridge player ?
S: North, will you respond to my query ?
whereupon I ventured:
nikos59: perhaps he means "natural"; perhaps he is no native english speaker
and pard replied:
North: i opened 1D or not?
but he could add no further explanation because we were
both ejected from the table simultaneously -and I wasn't
able to see what the hands were! I hasten to add that
North didn't participate at all in the proceedings and that
his/her only contribution was an occasional "glp-typ".
Nikos
This post has been edited by Rain: 2005-January-09, 17:21