SAVING THE GAME AT BRIDGE.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17933, 29 November 1923, Page 2

SAVING THE GAME AT BRIDGE.

I walked a cheery player at a London club recently who went down 300, 200, and 300 in three successive hands —BOO points in all. In spite of his partner's angry countenance he was quite self-satisfied, "Well, I saved the game, anyhow," h-3 said. When his partner pointed out that on two of the occasions the game was not in danger, he was unperturbed. "I wasn't tor know that," he Baid. "On my hand it looked as if it were gone." That is just the point. With him it was "my hand" all the time. He could not see beyond tfye length of his nose, nor could he imagine the possibility of his partner having any defence against the adverse call. He seemed to forget that his partner held thirteen cards. This passion for "saving the game" is :far too common. It is based upon several fallacies. First of all, the player who undertakes to save it cannot, as a rule, be certain that it could not be saved without his interference. Secondly, a game can be saved at too groat a cost. To 1 go on "saving" games and being fined in the process is the surest road to bridge ruin. And surely it is absurd to treat a rubber as if it were the last you were ever going to play. I can understand a man under sentence of death or in extremis playing his last rubber in a passionate frenzy, knowing it to be his -yery last. But when you know that you can have another rubber at once, or at any rate to-morrdVv, why rush in where angels fear to tread? It is the mark of the good player to lose small rubbers and win big ones. If you watch first-class practitioners you* will be, surprised to see how easily they let the rubber go. They do not believe in "pressing" when the weight of the cards is against them. "Let it go and start again" is their motto. And I am convinced it is a paying policy. The British bulldog idea of never knowing when you are beaten can be carried too far at bridge. When you realise you are beaten it is well to give in gracefully. The most trying partner at bridge i<3 the one who is constantly losing on good cards. I remember a player remarking after a disastrous game: "If only my partner had not held good hands we should have lost only a small rubber." It is one of the paradoxes of the game that the better the hands the bigger the losses. On thoroughly bad hands one is not tempted to bid. It is the hands that are good, but not quite good enough, that lure one to disaster. It is as difficult to arvoid temptation at bridge as in life. —By A. E. Manning Foster in London "Daily Maill."