A BRIDGE PROBLEM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19270, 6 January 1931, Page 7

A BRIDGE PROBLEM.

Is Mr. Jones, who by good luck and industry is half a sovereign in pocket on the year’s turnover at a Hampstead bridge-table, an amateur or a professional? asks a writer in the London “ Standard.” Equally, what is the status of the West End clubmen whose bank balances swell by four figures because of skill at the card table. Quite a number of them earn £2OOO a year there; a select few even more. Also (a third and last question), is a man of fluctuating fortunes an amateur in a losing year and a professional in a winning one? Here are posers for the amateur purist of golf, lawn tennis, football—almost any game you like—to ponder. What is the newly formed Bridge Association going to do about it? Wisely, it is likely to do exactly nothing. Problems so compL.ated would need so much solution that there would be no time for bridge. Bank balances would have to be investigated, and awkward questions asked about the professions of men who win solidly at their clubs. So the new association which is coming into being in order to promote interteam, inter-club, county and national matches, will step round this quagmire. Everyone who plays bridge well enough—provided, of course, that his bridge is above suspicion—will come within its purview when honours are concerned. Here at last is a game which will have no amateur pioblem; the association will sensibly refuse to create one. The man who wins more money than his fellows at the same stake is obviously the man to play for England.