Something.

7/19

Something.

7/20

Something.

There. I've written something for today. I even worked ahead, and got the whole weekend done. Oh, I kill me.

Lessee. What did I do this week?

Nages was up last weekend. He promised to play bridge with Jay and me, but then he got sucked into Diablo II. Bum.

Instead, we tried to teach Paul and Wedge how to play. This is generally a bad idea. Bridge is fiendishly complex. Ideally, you want three people who know what the hell is going on, or even more ideally, four people who know how to play, and any newbies who want to learn someday can sit and watch for a while. It actually didn't go too badly, though. Both of them had seen numerous bridge games, so they understood the rudiments of play, and knew that bidding was somehow important. The first game, Wedge and I simply did not get cards, so they kicked our asses. The second game was more even, but Paul and I were slightly ahead when Wedge and Nages had to leave.

The next night, Jay and I were heady with our success. Wedge and Paul had both seemed to enjoy the game, and they were asking a lot fewer questions by the second game. We vowed to teach Yahn and Alice.

It was such a clever plan. Yahn is moving in with Jay and Alice. Any time I wanted bridge, I could go over there, and find all the people I needed. No calling all over town. No dealing with "Well, where are we going?" or "Wait, I didn't know X wanted to play. I won't play with him." Just four reasonably cool people who could play a decent game.

Oh, how wrong we were. Alice said she had played. Then, she said she knew how to play, but she had no idea how to bid. Bidding is at least two thirds of the game. So, ok. She's starting at the level Wedge and Paul were at last night. We worked with it, and we can do so again.

Yahn, though, didn't have a clue. He had never even been in the same room as a bridge game before. I tried to make it as simple as possible. "Um, ok. Pick up your cards, and sort them by suit. Count up your points using the thing written at the top of the cheat sheet. Aces four, kings three, and so on."

From there, though, it all went downhill. Imagine Jay and me both talking simultaneously: "Find your strong suit length before strength (wait, what's a strong suit?) Your best suit you want one with at least four cards and one honor (but what's an honor?) face cards voids are points too wait we're confusing him count up your points and find a suit when you bid you're saying you're going to make book plus whatever the bid is like if it's a one bid, that's book plus one (WHAT'S BOOK?)" ad infinitum. Poor Yahn.

After a few hands, I think he understood basically what we trying to get at. Either that, or he just decided to humor us by faking it. See, the thing with bridge is, there are about 50 different things you should ideally have in your mind at all times. Jay and I were both trying to convey all of them in the first five minutes. It's the same thing we had done with Paul and Wedge, actually. The difference was that they could ignore most of our babble, because they kind of knew it already.

Then, there were further difficulties. I realized that Jay was still thinking of a lot of the guidelines as set-in-stone rules. Things that I had learned from experience weren't necessarily true, but were good starting points for beginners. "You must pull trump right away!" Well, no. It's usually the best plan, but sometimes there's a better one. "In No Trump, always lead fourth from longest!" Unless you have the high card in your partners suit, or unless your longest suit starts with a nine, or unless any of a dozen other possible circumstances. "Now you must bid your weak suit!" Not always. Sometimes you don't have one, and then looking for one just gives the opponents too much information.

So then I was torn. Should I be pointing this out to Jay, to make him a more thoughtful, and thus eventually better player, or should I let it slide, because Advanced Bridge Technique will confuse Alice, and may just reduce Yahn to a quivering mess?

And then there was the whole deal with part scores. Aargh. I understand that it's good for a beginner to play a couple of two bids at first, instead of going for game. But I fucking hate part scores. The game just drags on and on forever.

Then Paul wandered in, and said he would be glad to advise anyone who wanted help. I didn't have the heart to tell him he was a crack monkey if he thought he knew how to play bridge after one night.

Whimper. I can't help cringing at the thought of an entire legion of people who think they know how to bridge.

Vincent bridges. D. bridges, when persuaded. Jack and Anne bridge. Jay bridges. Nick bridges. Dante bridges. (He called this week. He'll be in town by the end of the month. Woo!) The point is, I have learned my lesson. There are numerous real bridge players in the area. There is no reason to play with more than one newbie at a time.

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