OVER THE CARD TABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 199, 23 August 1926, Page 5

OVER THE CARD TABLE.

AUCTION BRIDGE MADE EASY.

SOME OBVIOUS RULES. THE ART OF 'PETERING." (By " PETER.") (Reprinted from the "Auckland Star" Sports Edition.) There is probably no card game which has the vogue enjoyed by bridge among all sections of the community. It is a fascinating game, with tricky problems, but when one has been put right on the broad lines of play these problems will be found to add to the sparkle of wit against wit. In a series c£ articles, of which this is the eighth, an old-timer smoothes the path of the inexperienced player. ■ And here let one thing be made clear. Reasonable proficiency \t auction bridge, which makes the game more fascinating to the player concerned as well as far more enjoyable for his associates, is quite a simple accomplishment. But it will never be acquired merely by memorising rules of play, unless at the same time the underlying reasons for those rules is firmly comprehended. Why must you lead the highest of your partner's suit? Because otherwise, of course, that wretched man will not have the faintest notion the cards lie. If you lead your best card in his suit,, he knows instantly, looking at dummy's i hand and his own, what the enemy's concealed hand holds in that suit. The art of good auction bridge is to be constantly giving your partner all the information possible about your hand. Observe two contrasted instances. You are on the player"s left, about to open with a lead through dummy, and you hold queen, jack, ten and one of two small cards of one suit. If you lead the lowest of your sequence, the ten, your partner -will assume that the player, as neither dummy's nor his own hand holds them, has the queen, jackTherefore, you must lead your highest of the sequence, if that is the suit you are going to open. And, failing some strong indication from your partner, that would make quite a sound lead. But now suppose you sit on the other side, between dummy and the player of the hand, and your partner has led that same suit, of which you still hold those cards, through dummy up to you. In that case, of course, instead of your highest, the queen, you play the lowest, the, ten, of your nice little sequence. Because, •as it compels the player to take the trick either with the ace cr the king, it at once shows your partner where the intermediate honours are. I " Petering." Precisely the same rule, obviously dictated by common gumption, would apply whatever your sequence, even though you held even the king and queen, or jack and ten only. There is another handy little auction bridge convention, from which the writer has borrowed his norn de plume, known as "Petering." How often it happens that, the enemy having won the auction, the player who opens the lead has a fairly long suit with the ace and king. It is the same thing often enough if he has an ace and king topping a four suit. He leads his king, and, from his own hand and that of dummy, infers that either his partner or his opponent has only two cards in that suit. It follows that someone will, therefore, be able to ruff the third lead. But there in dummy i 3 the queen and two others of that suit. His king makes, so will his ace, but how about the third lead ?

Is he going, by leading out his two top honours, to present a perfectly gratuitous trick to the foeman? The problem he has to solve is whether. his opponent, the player of the hand, or his partner, the charming friend opposite, is short-suited and able to trump, if it happens to be the 'atter, or get in a useful and perhaps crucial discard from his own hand, if the former. This is just where "Petering" comes to the rescue. If your partner, or _nybody else for that matter, leads a suit of which you hold only two small cards, that suit not being trumps, always play the higher first. The process then works thus. Your partner has led his king. You throw a seven on it. He leads hie ace, you discard a three. You have well and truly "Petered." With absolute confidence your partner leads the same suit again, for the third time, knowing, as positively as though you had told him so, that you will ruff the third lead.

Of course, if you hold two cards only, of which one is a king or queen, you do not "Peter." That would be throwing away a perfectly good card. Thus it is plain how important it is to watch the fall of every card in a hand of auction bridge. If you 6ee your partner "Peter" on a lead, whether your own or the opponent's, and trumps have not been drawn, you know that, by leading that suit on the first opportunity, you will give your partner a change to make a small trump safely on a good card, or, if you happer to be the holder of that good card, to discard some other card that may enable him to transfer his ruff to one of the good cards in another suit held by the opponents. If the position of the play, or your partner's trumps, make a ruff inadvisable, he can easily avoid the necessity by refraining from "Petering." That useful little convention, played by everybody anywhere, is a signal that th? "Peterer" -wants another lead, and he could want it only in order to ruff. The ebb and flow of many a hard-fought rubber has been crucially swayed by an adroit "Peter." Need for Clear Thinking. And let us here make another point tlear. There are players who confuse the golden rule against leading a suit that the player of the hand can trump from either his own hand or dummy's— one of the most exasperating ineptitudes of all, actually presenting the enemy with a gorgeous chance to make his, trumps count twice—with the rule that enjoins the lead of a su'.t the player trumps in one hand only, and that his own. Never hesitate to lead a suit because the player is going to trump it from his own hand, unless by so doing you are going to establish master cards in that suit in the dummy hand. It is always a good thing to extract a trump card from the -player's It weakens him every time, and that without enabling him to make any trick which otherwise he might not have made. But of course, if the player is going to trump your best card, leaving the next best in dummy, with some card of re-entry to enable him to get into dummy and play that master later, you refrain from giving him that opportunity. But place yourself definitely outside the pale of those idiotic players who say: "I didn't know what to lead, partner, because he was trumping my suit!" That's just what you want him to do, other things being agreeable. ~When you

happen to be playing the hand yourtetf, I can assure you ever} trump your opponents force from your hand, without drawing theirs in return as you would by leading trumps, is anything but a cause of elation. Lead away with the suit you know the player must trump from his own hand, and, while denuding him of trumps, force him to lead up to you. There are exceptions to this rule, but rare ones, and, for novice*, might almost be ignored. It may happen, sometimes, however, that yon want, without enabling the player to get in and lead out trumps, to score tricks in other suits t'"\t might otVr\ I lost by discards from either dummy or his own hand, or it may be occasionally that you want to avoid the player getting in, and getting out trumps in order to work a joyous cross-ruff. Because the Sermon on the Mount does not apply either to modern warfare or auction bridge, at both these strenuous pastimes the great maxim is always to do unto your .opponent exactly and precisely as you most emphatically would not that he did ui»to you. Auction bridge is a beautiful game, but its ethics, considered severely from the copy book angle, are distinctly nasty!