A Bridge History Lesson by McBruce

It was 1925 and bridge was a modified form of whist beginning to be popular among card players. In the past 50 years, the old game of whist had been modernized. First was the introduction of the face-up dummy hand so the three remaining players could see half the deck and know that any missing card was in one of two, not three, possible hands. This form was called bridge-whist and was gaining popularity on whist by the end of the 19th century. Next was the creation of the auction, allowing all four players to bid for the right to name the trump suit. This version, called auction bridge, took over for bridge-whist by World War I.

In the same time period, the late 19th century, duplicate whist was invented and perfected from the original form of teams-of-four to the pairs competitions we know today. Both John Templeton Mitchell and Edwin Cull Howell, real people who devised the movements we still play today, were alive in this period, popularizing duplicate even before it was duplicate bridge. The duplicate concept works very well for single deals, where there are a finite number of decisions by which to measure pairs, after which a new deal begins with no scores carrying over from one deal to the next. Duplicate has been tried in other games and found unsuitable. For example, a duplicate backgammon tournament, where dice rolls, announced from a main table, are the same for the players at many tables, quickly diverges based on different choices at key decision points into many very different games. After about 20 moves from each side, a roll may lead to an obvious play at some tables and a very close decision at others. Bridge seems to be unique in that the scope of a single deal is not large enough to split results up so much that the scores are meaningless. By the mid-1920s, auction bridge duplicate games were played everywhere.

But there was one crucial improvement to be made to turn the game into the one we play today. Auction bridge (the non-duplicate kind) had always been played as a best-of-three contest between two pairs, the first pair winning two games winning the rubber, but in the auction days a game was only 30 points, with notrump-spades-hearts-diamonds-clubs scoring 10-9-8-7-6 per trick (after six). This set the tiers we have today, with 3NT, 4 of a major, or 5 of a minor needed for game in one hand. However, in auction bridge there was no need to actually bid that high: if you played in Three Spades and made 12 tricks, you would score 54 points towards game, and also earn a slam bonus. This led to a period of play where there was a great emphasis on plays to turn eleven tricks into twelve by trump coups or endplays or other expert techniques, since it paid so well. From our point of view today, this sounds crazy, letting a side win the auction at the two or three level and because they make a bunch of overtricks they get a slam bonus. But in the early twenties, it was part of the game and efforts to remove this element were mostly unsuccessful. The only auctions that actually got to the five level were great battles between two pairs to choose a trump suit.

Then came Harold Vanderbilt and the 1925 Halloween cruise through the Panama Canal, 100 years ago this week. Vanderbilt proposed a improved scoring system as well as a new rule: overtricks don’t count towards game and slam bonuses only score if you bid to that level. To offset the extra risk, Vanderbilt pumped enough oomph into the bonuses for game and slam to make the odds better for punters. In auction bridge scoring, winning the rubber was worth the same as beating a contract five tricks undoubled. Now it was worth twice that, and even more if you won two games to none! An auction bridge small slam bonus was worth the same as beating the opponents a trick; now it was worth seven to ten times as much, with the value of the game added as a further bonus. The race to 100 to complete a game was now tallied seperately from all bonuses, including overtricks, and you needed to bid to a level that would get you the game points you needed. Vanderbilt also invented the idea of vulnerability, if not the name itself (it was coined by a kibitzer whose name nobody remembered, probably because she wanted to change half of Vanderbilt's rules to make it even wilder!). Being vulnerable discouraged the side who won the first game from overbidding to stop the other side from catching up.

This new version of a familiar game took off like the Rubik’s Cube craze of the early 1980s; before long, everyone was playing the new game of Contract Bridge, and five years later when the Great Depression arrived, a deck of cards kept the game on everyone’s kitchen table and an industry of books and newspaper articles kept people interested in the new game’s mysteries and secrets, just as the bookshelves in 1981 were filled with books on how to solve the colourful 3x3x3 monster from Hungary. Contract Bridge was The Game within a decade of Vanderbilt’s cruise. By 1935, bridge had taken off: decks of cards included a card showing the Contract Bridge scoring table, a weeks-long match in New York between two rival groups of experts had been front-page news and even had radio coverage, a number of international matches were played between American and European teams, and a man had even been shot dead by his wife as a result of a poorly-played hand! The ACBL began in 1937 and has organized club and tournament play as well as supporting the promotion and education of the game since.

The game itself is almost completely unchanged from the scoring and rules that Vanderbilt typed up on ship and gave a dozen copies to friends. What's changed since? Not much. A few small scoring changes, a gradual development and refinement of rules and tournament procedures, a long trail of tried, discarded, and kept conventions and systems, and since the late 1970s the gradual introduction of new equipment and new events: computer scoring, bid-boxes, stratified and bracketed events, wireless table-top scoring units, and now online play. But it is still the same game they played on the ship in 1925.

What’s lost is the mystery; the fun of learning. Today’s new player learns conventions that took decades to perfect, all in an afternoon, but often skips or forgets the advanced stuff to go on excitedly to the next convention. Players in 1930 did not even suspect that it might be a good idea to try to find a 4-4 major suit fit after a 1NT opener, or have a 4NT bid that asked partner how many aces they held. It took years of experimentation to even see the need for such conventions, and more time to develop them. A few conventions were held over from earlier forms of the game: takeout doubles from bridge-whist and defensive signals from original whist. Stayman and Blackwood are the two next most popular conventions, and they were not fully accepted by the masses until the 1940s.

Duplicate bridge, for all of its fascination, has some answering to do as well. It is great that we have this form of the game that allows masses of people to play at the same time with the same set of deals, knowing that their score for the day will be based only on comparison with scores that others got holding the same cards. But part of the charm and a lot of interesting strategy from the original form, rubber bridge, has been irretrievably lost. Partscore bidding strategy is a lost art: with 60 below the line, partner’s raise from 1♥︎ to 2♥︎ may be a stretch for game, and 1♥︎ - 3♥︎ must be either pre-emptive or a slam try. Our strong preference for matchpoints and overtricks has blinded us to the strategies of ensuring that the contract gets made, and quite often those old strategies lose. It cannot be good that pairs and teams are two forms of the game that to many players seem as different as rugby league and rugby union. (Not that I've ever been able to understand either...)

So, I have a suggestion: a new form of Contract Bridge that will restore the mystery as players learn its strategies. It’s time to continue to evolve the game, instead of the technology or the rules, and see if we can get some new players trying the latest version. Here are three simple improvements that would keep existing players playing, and maybe draw some interested new ones, while forcing the authorities and experts to figure out new strategies to take full advantage, some of which would fall victim to other new strategies laying in wait! We need not make the change immediately, we can run both flavours simultaneously and see which ones players prefer. But let’s give these a fair try and not pre-judge merely because it is different. It’s different because we need to be shaken up before we dwindle away!

There are two new simple rules and one restored rule; one of them concerns matchpoints only and doesn’t apply to other forms of scoring. I don't have a yacht and rich friends to invite to try it out, but I can post this online and let you give it a try. Here are the McBridge rules:

McBRIDGE NEW RULE #1: Re-introduction of partscore bidding to duplicate. Partscores still do not carry over from one deal to the next, but they are now part of the starting position for each deal. One card of a special 36-card partscore deck will be added to each board after machine shuffling or manual dealing. If someone pre-makes the boards, they can add the correct cards to each board when done and the computer can assign the partscore cards to each deal randomly. If the players shuffle and deal, the Director comes around with a shuffled partscore deck and inserts one card into one of the slots as the hand is dealt. Some cards will go into boards that have no part in the game, and thus the number of partscore deals will be higher some sessions and lower in others. When players pull their cards from the board, the player who picks up this special fourteenth card, puts it face up on top of the board, so all can see the true conditions for the deal:

• 20 of the 36 cards will say NO PARTSCORES
• 8 of the 36 cards will say FORTY or SIXTY to DEALER’S SIDE or NON-DEALER’S SIDE (2 of each combination)
• 2 of the 36 cards will say FORTY to BOTH SIDES
• 2 of the 36 cards will say SIXTY to BOTH SIDES
• 2 of the 36 cards will say FORTY to DEALER’S SIDE, SIXTY to NON-DEALER’S SIDE
• 2 of the 36 cards will say SIXTY to DEALER’S SIDE, FORTY to NON-DEALER’S SIDE

Suddenly, game and slam bidding changes on the approximately 44% of hands that have partscores involved. Most hands will still be love all, as they are in rubber bridge, but the added variety will be an extra challenge whenever it comes up. Players and system makers have to work out how best to take advantage of this ever-changing condition, just as rubber bridge players have for years. When you have 60 on, two clubs is game. What’s three clubs? A lot of former partscore hands are going to have potential for game with partscores added in.

Why forty and sixty? Partscores can be anything from 20 to 90, but 40 and 60 are the most common and the next most common, 70 and 30, are virtually the same. One important factor is that if one side begins a deal with a partscore and the other side bids and makes a partscore, the 50 point bonus for having a partscore now belongs to both sides and they cancel out, so your 2NT making is only worth 70, not 120: but it will be worth 70 at every other table on this deal, so there is no disadvantage.

We’ll need a small upgrade to the BridgeMates and other scoring systems, so that when North enters the board number, they also enter the partscore conditions, and the machine checks to ensure that the choice matches previous choices, correcting if needed. I’m sure the BridgeMate people could do this in a few days and have a tested update ready to go. ACBLscore, which has been around for four decades of computer advance, might be a little more difficult to update, but it should be possible. We’ll also need a way to deal the partscore cards the same way to multiple copies of the same deal set at large tournaments. Not hard. We’ll figure it out.

The partscore deck is designed so that you can adjust it to your liking. Most games these days have only boards 1-28 in play, or even fewer. If players think there are too many partscore hands, you can get them started by taking out one of the two partscore cards of each type, leaving 28 cards, enough for most duplicate games these days. If players love the partscore battles and want to get even more practice at them, you can take out eight of the ‘no partscores’ cards and deal the remaining 28 cards into boards 1-28.

One interesting feature of this change is that your local money bridge professional, who has a home game where he dominates his clients and marks by his superior judgment of partscore situations, can no longer shun duplicate bridge because it’s “not his form of the game.” For every ACBL member hooked by duplicate there are ten bridge players out there who claim they don’t like duplicate, and no partscores is usually part of the reason why. No more excuses, Mr. Local Money Bridge Ace! Come in and play; you were right all along: partscores are fun!

MCBRIDGE NEW RULE #2: McPoints! This alternative to matchpoints reduces the outsized effect of overtricks when matchpointing boards. This rule applies only to matchpoint scoring. Currently pairs get one matchpoint for a score beaten, and a half-matchpoint for a score tied. Whether the difference between the two raw scores compared is 10 or 1000 is irrelevant. This rule would change that slightly, so that:

• a score that is higher/lower than a compared score by exactly 10 points is worth 60%/40% of a McPoint.
• a score that is higher/lower than a compared score by exactly 20 points is worth 70%/30% of a McPoint.
• a score that is higher/lower than a compared score by exactly 30 points is worth 80%/20% of a McPoint.
• a score that is higher/lower than a compared score by exactly 40 points is worth 90%/10% of a McPoint.
• a score that is higher/lower than a compared score by 50 points or more is worth 100%/0% of a McPoint.

To earn a full McPoint, you must beat another pair’s score by 50 or more. You get something for overtricks, just not as much. Here are a few examples from a recent regional open pairs:

It's not a huge change, but it takes the sharp edges off scores with small differences while keeping the full matchpoint for larger differences. It devalues overtricks a little, but also devalues the difference between 90-100-110-120-130 even more, while still keeping scores ranked properly. I’ve read a lot of bridge books and seen remarkably little on strategy to play the partscore that might score 10 points more than another strain, and overtricks are just as often due to unlucky opening leads as to declaring skill. It makes for a fairer score, in the same way that those new Victory Point Scales where every IMP counts remove the luck in Victory Point events, where on the old scales you could have two teams +45 IMPs on the day, but one might have been at the very top of the 13-7 range, while the other broke into 14-6 a few times for some crucial extra VPs.

To the casual player, this scoring change would have very little effect. To the experienced player, this method of matchpointing would bring us away from the crazier matchpoint techniques, like playing for the extra 10 points in notrump on hands that might go down five once in ten tries but gain you two matchpoints the other nine times. Now maybe you only gain one matchpoint and odds favour playing in the normal suit contract. Reducing the value of overtricks makes it a riskier gamble to try for them if your contract is jeopardized, which matchpoints has taught us to do without even thinking about it! Adding a good dollop of partscore-aided game bonuses to the mix will offset the contraction of matchpoints this scale produces, by making the game tier more accessible on more hands.

McBRIDGE "NEW" RULE #3: Honors (or honours in non-American English) are back, baby! 100 extra for a hand (declarer’s. dummy’s or even one of the defenders’) with four of the top five in the trump suit or three aces in notrump, 150 for AKQJT in trumps or four aces in notrump, regardless of how the contract actually fares. If you go down but have honours you sum the two awards and might even come out on the plus side! Why on earth did we ever remove them? We had a little bonus that everyone holding a certain type of hand could claim as long as they manoeuvred the auction to the denomination that paid. Often getting partner to agree to this denomination cost more than it gained, so why remove that chuckle from the game? Opening 1NT with four aces is now a maximum, maybe even too strong for a 15-17 1NT, since you're getting a bonus of 150 points whatever the result! Pre-emptors will go wild when they have 100 honours (not realizing that down one more might cost 200 extra if doubled). If two partners with honours in their suit want to overbid by four levels trying to ensure that their suit gets honours credit, who are we to stop them with some stuffy rule? I suppose we removed this feature before matchpoint scoring was invented. When duplicates were scored by total points, players who, because of the movement, didn’t get to play the hand with honours, would be at a slight disadvantage. But now that we matchpoint (or McPoint), and every pair that plays a hand has a fair and equal chance to earn 100% on every hand, whether it includes honours or not, get it back in there! It's fun!

It might take ten or fifteen years for this new form of the game to be completely analyzed and proven strategies emerge, including perhaps some entirely new conventions, or subtle adjustments to old ones. And that’s fine. Those years will be filled with curious, inquiring players trying to find the key to success under the new rules, struggling to find strategies that work, instead of looking for new strategies in what is now a century-old game. Does anyone play whist anymore? Is that where we want bridge to go? We need to keep occasionally improving the old game, adding well-meaning tweaks to keep it fresh. A new gadget on the table to help score, or a new alert procedure, or updated Laws that make better sense, or some simplified online version to get new players intrigued, are all helpful, but they’re not getting the job done as an interesting new flavour might. It’s an old, old game we play now, with many new ones springing up every week to try to draw our players into them instead. The regulations of the quiet past are inadequate to the vibrant present. Our game is no longer new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our pastime!

Only the ACBL combines them, apparently

(Sometimes I get the urge to write something that is so powerful it almost types itself and little editing is required. This came out of my keyboard on Sept. 7, 2012, in response to a bridge forum thread where some non-ACBL types wondered about the curious idea we have to combine the system (convention) card with a player’s personal scorecard:)

Those of you without experience in ACBL club bridge probably have no way of adequately imagining the way these ACBL combined system and score card plastic doodads infiltrate the club scene, making a quick examination of the opponents’ bidding system at the start of a round nearly impossible.

The proper form for the experienced club player is to have one convention card for everyone you have ever played a session with in your life, and scoresheets on the inside part from every game for the past 2-3 presidential administrations. This means the things weigh about as much as a jockey at the race track, and eventually, after a long life, suddenly explode like George Costanza’s wallet. They appear to be designed so that you can add more pages to either the outer system card area, or the inner score card area, stretching the plastic little by little. But any notion of removing scorecards from the Clinton presidency, or system cards for your occasional game with players who died during the Florida recount, is simply not on. The plastic may stretch, but it does not snap back to original tension when paper is removed. Going from 150 pages to a svelte 20 means that every time you get up to move for a new round, half of your partners, or the scores you got with them, end up on the floor.

Luckily, at many regionals, part of the hospitality is designating one session during the week-long tournament where everyone playing will get a new convention card holder. This usually prompts people to do a bit of CCH editing and the host hotels and playing site must be sure to schedule a special visit from the garbage truck. The lengths people will go to ensure that they are playing when the free CCHs are handed out are terrifying. You can buy one at the booksellers location at any time for about 15% of the cost of an entry fee. Instead, people have been known to extend their stay an extra day, reschedule their flights, in order to be in a seat when the free ones come out. God help the poor caddy who doesn't have a proper selection of colours.

My role at Pacific Northwest regionals in the past few years has been in producing Daily Bulletins, and I go to great lengths to discover everything I can about each site that may interest the players or be generally useful, like where to park your car if you want it towed away. But I never print the session the free convention card holders are coming out. I’d be lynched if I got it wrong, or it was changed at the last minute. I do my best not to even find out, to avoid having to lie when players ask.

Luckily, our District is getting smart and not giving them out except at the largest Regionals. Instead, in a cost-cutting measure, they give out little fuzzy stickers with the tournament city’s name and some sort of iconic symbol to stick onto the plastic, so that a year later you’ll remember how much fun you had and come back. The stickers are even more popular than the convention card holders! Trouble is, people start collecting the stickers like stamps on a passport, and soon there is only about a 15% chance the information you want will not be under a peach or a skunk or a watermelon or something even more inane.

Last summer we lost a very popular nonagenarian who played every day, with everyone, almost right up until the end of her life. A beautiful memorial gathering was held at her house on a bright shiny Sunday afternoon, and among the tables of photographs and mementos was a display of the convention cards in her last convention card holder (or maybe the last two or three). I’m told these were deployed, overlapping with only the names at the top visible, over several bridge-sized tables. Her surviving relatives encouraged and pleaded with the bridge people who came to pay their respects to feel free to take home the ones bearing their own name.

So the concept of a start-of-round quick look at the opponents system card, in ACBL club bridge (and a major portion of tournament bridge as well), is viewed with about the same attitude as would follow from an attempt to peddle real estate, interest someone in life insurance, or sell illegal drugs. Often your opponent will be writing scores from the last round, trying to steer the pencil around the fuzzy tiger or the furry football. There is no way the 247 sheets of paper will both stay in the plastic and fold over, so if you hold it up to try and see what partnership agreements lie hidden under the twenty-seven colourful stickers, you will be simultaneously displaying the opponents’ scores to your partner, and there is not a chance in hell you want partner influenced by anything they may have done.

(Thanks to the restoring of old Matchpointer issues by Tom Anderson at this page, I found this one in the November 2000 Matchpointer, back in the days when we were still printing it and I was both the editor and the Unit President in a very shorthanded Unit Board. Before reading this, you might want to view this exchange from CBC News of October 13, 1970, in which CBC reporter Tim Ralfe and other reporters asked Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau about the measures he had imposed in Quebec following the kidnapping of a British diplomat and the Quebec Minister of Labour by Quebec separatist activists. My issue—clubs not reporting their events and blaming me for not actively getting it from them as I had previously tried to do—was not even close to similar, but it did not stop me from using the thirty-year old transcript to make a subtle point that most probably missed....)

Club Managers—Alert

Names withheld to protect the guilty

Sir, what is it with the club ads this issue?

Haven’t you noticed?

Yes, I’ve noticed them. I wondered why you decided to make them smaller.

What’s your worry?

I’m worried about the Matchpotnter not properly advertising club events.

Why? Is there something missing? Are you aware of an event that isn’t mentioned?

Well, friends of mine, club managers, say that there are a few not mentioned.

Yes? Did your friends mention those events to me, or to the Club Liaison, Mr. Friedman?

Well, they’ve never had to before.

Aha...

You have said before that you would do what you could to find out what was going on at all clubs.

Sure. That’s what you’re complaining about, isn’t it?

Well yes, but surely you’ve done a lot less this time than you have for previous issues.

Yes, but let me ask you what your own logic is. I have a phone, an answering machine, e-mail, and a highly visible Club Liason who plays at most of the clubs I don’t play at. In addition to my duties as Unit President, I should spend lots of time going after data from people who cannot read a deadline? Mr. Friedman, who is collecting this information voluntarily, should? That seems to be your position.

But surely you can simply make a list of the items you need, the people you haven't heard from, and pass that on to the Club Liaison.

I've done that before too. But that too takes time, and gives an unfair disadvantage to those few who get their data in on time—they do the work and others get it done for them. Is that just?

I explained it badly, I think, but what you’re talking about to me is choices. And my choice is to have a Matchpointer that is informative and complete, which means that you don’t have club ads that ignore a club’s special events and you don’t list half of the club information as “unreported.”

That’s my choice too. Correct.

And one of the things I have to give up for that choice is the fact that volunteers like you have to work a lot harder.

Sure, but this isn’t my choice any more. You know, I think it is more important to emphasize that club ads are free and the Unit could make back almost a quarter of the printing costs by charging for that space. But we don’t, because, when used correctly, the club ad space does what the Matchpointer is supposed to do: promote bridge. But I think part of my duty as editor is to ensure that this gift to clubs is used correctly, and when it gets to the point where many club managers need to be reminded of a deadline that is clearly printed every issue, this renders our hard work meaningless. Now, you don’t agree to this but I am sure that with hindsight, you would probably have found it preferable if all the information was submitted, which is not the case, because I’ve gone out and obtained it before and this time I didn’t. But even with your hindsight I don’t see how you can deny that a club should be responsible for submitting its results.

No, I still go back to the choice you have to make in the kind of Matchpointer that you want to produce.

Yes, well, there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to have to do their small duty to promote bridge, leaving it to others who get overloaded. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it is more important to make sure that when an opportunity for club promotion is presented, that club managers take advantage of it by letting us know of their winners instead of just waiting for us to find out...

At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?

Well: just watch me.

(This one required special treatment to fit into the very full October 1995 Matchpointer which is here. I didn't want to take an editing scalpel to the text itself, since I had a feeling this was one of my better efforts, but the space left over for it was not quite big enough. Eventually I got it onto page 16 and most of 17, by reducing the already small font size a half-point and going to three columns, making it nearly necessary to use a magnifying glass to read! A few months later I lifted the text and used it as a response to a Usenet thread and David Stevenson, a tournament director in England, asked if he could reprint it on his website, and I agreed and sent him several more articles.  Soon I would occasionally get requests from various places to reprint the article in a tournament bulletin: in India, Africa, South America, and Asia! I often quote a favorite line from Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock that my little article has travelled to every quarter of the globe, and at times into every eighth or sixteenth of it! In 2024, directing at the Toronto NABC, a player read my nametag and told me how much he enjoyed the article I had written 29 years earlier.

Thirty years later, most of it is still relevant, although few clubs these days use travelers, and many use time-clock screens so everyone can see how many minutes are left in a round. There is a sequel out there somewhere, written after I began directing games, which was far less popular than this original, written when I was a player.)

Hurry Up And Think

(October 1995 Matchpointer)

The biggest irritant in duplicate bridge, claimed a survey not too long ago, is not table rudeness, or complicated systems, or even anything to do with smoking. It is slow play. Many experienced local players who used to play frequently are seldom seen at clubs these days. Is it because they play rubber at home? because they’ve lost interest? because they feel no need to beat inferiors? because they’ve lost touch with the latest conventions? No. It is because they haven’t the patience to play club bridge anymore, because it’s too damn slow.

As a result, many club games are getting smaller. Once you lose the top end of your player base, the remaining members of your game don’t attend with anywhere near the frequency of the bridge-crazy addicts, and attendance goes slowly down. You can point to a lot of reasons attendance is off, but the number one turn-off of this game is following a pair who is slow every round, or waiting for the North-South pair at the next table to complete the round and hand you the boards.

And what do you read about slow piay, and how to prevent it? They tell us to play quickly, don’t conduct post mortems, don’t waste time smoking or getting coffee or talking to friends between rounds, claim when you can, and all sorts of obvious things like that. Sort of like advising a pitcher to throw strikes and don’t give up a hit, or a goalie to keep the puck from entering the net. The real keys to playing fast are in forming habits that serve to keep the game moving, and staying alert at the table.

To play fast you don’t need to play “fast”; you just need to play slow less often.

Suppose the auction goes 1NT (15-17) on your right, you pass an eleven count, LHO makes a transfer. You should see that there is a great chance for you to be on opening lead eventually, and you should start figuring out what your best lead might be against notrump, or against the suit about to be bid by RHO. Once the auction is over, you can immediately place a card on the table. After your lead is turned face up, you can write the contract on your convention card as declarer studies dummy.

You scoff. “That might save five seconds,” you say. “Over the course of the night that might save a minute or two at most.” Point taken. But how often have you seen one or more of these:

• a fourth pass by the player whose bid was passed out
• “whose hearts; is it my lead?”
• “what did we do on board seven, partner?”

These events don’t cost five seconds; they cost minutes. But if you get into the habit of keeping the game moving, it will speed up the game a little bit, by getting opening leads onto the table quicker and saving time figuring the best defense because you need to go over the bidding again in your mind before leading to trick three; and, it will speed up the game a lot, because players who are really at the table almost never ask “is it my lead,” or make a fourth pass, or forget what happened on the previous board.

So let’s go over the ground and look at a single deal and how time wasted can be extra time saved:

Arriving at the table: this is where most of the time goes. The smoking ban in effect now at most clubs forces smokers to go outside or to a special room to smoke, where you can’t hear the round being called. Many clubs have washrooms, or coffee and other refreshments that are far away from the tables. Some clubs even have less washroom space than they need and lineups result. None of these is any excuse for arriving at the table late. The only excuse for arriving at the table late is that you were still playing boards when the round was called. Even this is not an excuse if you finished the boards late and then went to get a leisurely refreshment while your next opponents were waiting (although we will make an exception for biological urgency, provided you follow it up with bridge urgency to make up for the lost time).

Greeting the opponents: too many of us don’t. But some of us greet with such profusion that by the time the first bid is finally made, other tables have played six tricks already. The happy medium is to greet and pull cards from the slot simultaneously. This keeps everybody happy. If someone wants to tell a story, fine, but don’t let it hold up the bidding. Correct form is “...so Freddie went up to the officer and said ‘Sir, I respectfully — redouble — I respectfully submit that...’ ” If you are not confident in simultaneously bidding and being the jovial raconteur, simply mention that you have a funny story to tell after the round, and almost certainly you'll have time — trust me.

Sorting cards: even with my bizarre method of card sorting, I take about the same amount of time as everyone else. What isn’t cricket is when somebody has to say “still sorting” because the dealer has passed his 2-count without sorting. This slows things down for everyone, since there is the awkward knowledge that the dealer passed quickly. The time gained by the quick pass is swiftly lost by the other players as they try to ignore this unauthorized information. Sort your good hands and your bad ones. We also need to recognize that some players have genuine trouble in sorting their cards and need a few extra seconds. Rushing them inevitably causes more timewasting later.

Bidding: Take a few seconds before sorting to check the dealer and vulnerability on each board. Reduce the essential information to two words: “We/They/Both/None” for vulnerability and “1st/2nd/3rd/4th” for the seat you are in. If you’re East on Board 15, you simply remember “They; 4th.” (If those new boards with the green hands and the funny vulnerability stickers confuse you, you won’t be confused when you make it a habit to look for this information every deal.) Why? Because the number one timing problem in bidding consists of players not realizing it is their turn. Either the dealer hasn’t seen that he is the dealer, or the player due to make the next bid is waiting for LHO to say something. If you are next to call and are thinking for more than a few seconds, it’s a good idea to give some indication that you know it is your bid, to put minds at rest.

Before the opening lead: Once the bidding is over, somebody should say aloud the contract and declarer (“...so, Six Hearts Redoubled, by East...”) and the players should write the contract down now on the backs of their convention cards — except the player on opening lead, who should open the proceedings before writing the contract down.

The play: The opening leader should have the contract written down by the time the thirteen cards in dummy appear. At this point, no matter how obvious the play to the first trick, declarer should think for a half-minute or so before playing. Opening leader’s partner may also wish to take some time, either before or after he plays his card. Time taken at the first trick is not time wasting; this is virtually always a time of planning and deep thought. Later in the hand, however, there are all sorts of needless irritating time wasting tactics that happen frequently:

• declarer thinks for a minute, then leads towards an ace-queen in dummy, LHO follows low smoothly, and declarer now goes into the tank again. Surely during the first tank he should have considered that the most likely outcome was a low card from LHO. His decision whether to finesse or not should have already been made.
• a player pulls a card from his hand, holds it unseen in mid-air, then replaces it again. Ten seconds later, the same act with a different card (or is it the same one again?). Some declarers even go so far within their blue funk of deep thought as to play a card at a speed of about three millimetres a minute, until everyone in the club can see what it is, only to quickly pull it back at the last moment! This often causes the opponents to throw their cards on the table in disgust, which undoubtedly contributes to the time wasting, but under such torture who can blame them?
• many newer players (especially when trying to learn from a better partner) go out of their way to make the absolutely 100% perfect and proper signal on defense on every card. This results in ten seconds to decide whether to play the five or the three first as declarer runs his solid nine-card suit. Partner is usually so zonked by the repeated tanks he doesn’t even notice the signals.
• it’s my impression that people who look at the ceiling usually have nothing to think about at that time.

The solution to all of these is to stay ahead of what’s happening. Don’t detach a card until you’re sure you want to play it. Don’t lead up to dummy without some idea of what card you’ll be playing in the likely circumstances. Don’t take on too many defensive gadgets at once: the proper way to leam how to signal is to start slow and add things little by little. The ceiling won’t help you.

Claiming: Many players have run into the Laws while trying to claim and have decided apparently to never try it again. This costs us all time. If you fear claiming because there’s a trump out and you might muff the claim statement, just play a few more tricks until all you need to do is show your cards. If on defense you can see that dummy is good (and you know that partner cannot win another trick), concede. It saves time.

Irregularities: There's nothing sillier than players debating over whether the director should be called after an irregularity occurs. Call him. You may have heard that you can’t call the director if you’re dummy. Call him anyway. Don’t waste time dillying over whether the irregularity means anything. Keep calling until your call is acknowledged. (There are players who think that you can summon a director by waving, as though they’re bidding another fifty in a silent auction. You can’t. Yell at him. Even if he’s on the phone.)

After trick thirteen: Whoever is closest to North’s convention card is responsible for seeing that North grabs the traveller first, before he enters the score on his own scoresheet. If North tries to enter the score on his convention card first, I suggest slapping your hand down on it. If North wishes to blab on, I suggest one of East or West take the scoresheet themselves and open it up for him. There is so much opportunity for time to be lost here that all four players should be especially vigilant. Get the job done before discussing the hand at length. Don’t let anyone have an extended look at the scoresheet while there are still boards to play. A glimpse or two, or a quick (and quiet) recap of the most popular scores by North, fine. A comprehensive analysis of who bid the slam against whom, by counting tables to figure out who is pair 13, is not at all proper.

At all times: Be aware of how much time you have before the round is to be called. Directors could do a lot more to help players in this respect. Few directors anymore say “you should be on your last board,” or something like that. It’s better for a director to announce when a round is half-over, so that players can speed up if necessary.

The Golden Rule: There is one misapprehension that almost all players share with regards to slow play, and that is the fault principle. Too many players adamantly refuse to speed up their game (which as we’ve seen, does not necessarily mean to play fast, but just to avoid playing slowly) after a pair arrives late, since they feel that they were not responsible for the original delay. This sort of thing happens:

Round One: Played 3NT and needed to engineer a difficult endplay to make it, then a difficult defense for the needed 800 against our vulnerable game. Left the table three minutes into the next round.

Round Two: Got to table to find no opponents, they were fetched from the smoking area outside five minutes into the round, and sat down saying “what took you so long?” Three times during the round we tried to speed this pair up, but they insisted on postmorteming the first board, and South took two minutes before being reminded it was his lead on the second. Left five minutes late, with opponents behind us waiting.

Round Three: Asked North, explaining system to South, to fill in the scoreslip after the first board and he exploded. “Not my fault you guys arrived late; you’ll have to play quicker. Bloody slow players.’ Continued post-mortem. Director announced an early break, “because of a certain East-West pair.”

Do you think the East-West pair is going to be back next week? Probably not, but the two North-South pairs will. Notice that the East-West pair had a few tough hands and got behind, tried to catch up, and were denied the opportunity. Don’t blame the director: no director can monitor every table to find out who’s at fault when a pair gets behind. By this time, it probably looks to the director like the East-West pair is slow.

The Golden Rule is that there is only one person responsible for slow play: YOU. I don’t care what the circumstances are, I don’t care if you’ve never been late getting to a table in your life: if you make no effort to get caught up, you are guilty. If your attitude is “I won't help because it isn’t my fault,” you are hurting the game more than any slow pair ever could.

Fast players don't play “fast.” They just slow the game down less often. As a result, they have more time to think. What we need to do is look for the ways we all slow down the game and get rid of them, filling them with awareness and pauses for thought.

Slow players don't play “slow.” They lose the thread and take time doing a whole slew of unnecessary things that slow the game down. It takes only one player to cause delays. Don’t let that person be you. Keep the game moving: hurry up — and think!