“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said

V N Ramamoorthy

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The title of the blog is from Alice in Wonderland. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

This sentence applies quite aptly to some of the explanations for bids that you see in tournaments these days.

I am exasperated, to put it mildly 😂

What happened to ethics, moral and decency in the game of Gentlemen ( which includes gentle women too)? Has the Bridge vocabulary given a go - by to these words?

You may ask, why this tirade, today, VNR? Well, I seem to be fighting a lone battle against those tight - lipped , hard nosed , thick skinned specimens in the garb of "Bridge gentlemen" 😭

Your partner opens 1C. Your RHO bids 2H. Now you click on that to know what his system is or what does it mean to his partner / opponents.

The answer? You guessed right!

A simple one word "Suit"! As if you thought it was a coat instead of a suit 😉. Honest explanations could be like "Weak preempt" , "Heart and a minor 5-5 or 5-4" Or " Long suit with 6-11" etc. But no, we are too honest to disclose that. Now we have to employ a detective or a Thuppariyum Sambhu to unearth the meaning 😢

And what is this with the attitude of Precision players ( mostly with some exceptions which are far and few). Most of them just announce "Precision " at the beginning ( thanks to their generosity and benevolence). And they think that the rest of the world understands every bid of their system 😇

The other day one player opened "1D" . When I clicked a query the insipid answer is " Precision ". After playing for 5 decades don't I know that - my question was how many D cards minimum. No , he won't answer that and the sarcastic reply with stiff upper lips, is "Already told you precision" !

I have been advocating to precision players any number of times, number extending to any large count of times that in spite of announcing "Precision", they are duty- bound to pre- alert with explanation in the box, all the artificial bids.
But the mule-like attitude is just irritating to say the least!

Mind you, I was a Precision player for over 2 decades. But what about the number of intermediate, beginners and newbies? Don't they matter?

Another idiosyncrycy of some so called experts is to go into silent mode. Any number of times you click or chat, the nonchalant reply is "No explanation available" 😢

My appeal to all the bridge gurus : please teach the ABC's of bridge ethics and courtesy to your wards. The gadgets and XYZ can wait!

Need of the hour is to develop "Good, decent, principled, courteous " players, they will become experts by efflux of time 😌🙂

Re-write the bridge dictionary, Gurus, you will be doing a yeomen service ✌

Happy ( decent) bridging!

Disclaimer : All opinions are entirely those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the BridgeFromHome Team.