Evening Star Newspaper, November 29, 1931, Page 99

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 29, 1391. 171 ® /HE BRIDGE [fORUM Is Auction Bridge About to Make Its [ast Stand Among Expert Players?—The King Is Dead; Long Live the King! Poor Thing! 'fln laughs at other people's faces— The girl who leads her queens toward aces. She smirks and struts to beat the band But often bids a worthless hand. She high hats every one she knows . While losing everywhere she goes. She acts as if she knows it all, A most transparent kind of stall. We can't protest her being curt, Por she’'s the only one that's hurt. T looks very much as if auction bridge is about to make its last stand among ex- pert players as a medium of real cham- pionship competition. The annual national tournament of the American Bridge League, which in past years has been made up largely of auction events, will have only two days of them on the all-week program beginning tomorrow in the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia. The two contract title contests—national teams of four and national pairs—will occupy the balance of the week. Since the league has five very fine trophies presented in past years for auction titles, and since all of them should be in play as long as that game lasts, five contests are crowded into the first two days. The men’'s pair and team of four titles will be decided in omne double-barreled event, women’s pair and team of four laurels in another, and mixed pair bhonors in a third. There is a movement afoct in the league to have all of the trophies for these swung over to some form of contract competitions, which is more than likely to be done within the next year or so. The big excitement of the tournament is over the open contract team of four championship and the open contract pair title. The latter will take up three after- noons, and the team event three evenings and an afternoon. Many of the star players from various cities will not be present on the first two days, but will arrive just in time for the two contract combats, in which there is the keenest interest. With contract in the ascendancy, it seems nearly time for the lament over the old game— “The King is dead; long live the King!” May Reorganize the League George Reith or New York is the chairman of a special committee to recommend a plan for reorganization of the league along lines he has favored for quite some time. It is his belief that the authority should be vested in the clubs of the country, each having a repre- sentative on a board with power to govern all of the organisation’s affairs. That is the way the golf association is organized. At present the authority is vested presumably in the play- ers as individuals, not through the medium of their clubs. Definite proposals in connection with the new plan will be submitted, and it is confi- dently expected that whatever is done about them will mean another forward step in the league’s career. As it is, the last year under the presidency of Capt. Frederick G. French of Philadelphia has been in every respect the best the league has yet enjoyed. The “Officz'fll System” When player's hand contains two sound original bids, the choice between them is not arbitrary, but on a natural basis. If he pos- sesses & good suit bid and a not-so-good no- trump bid, he prefers the suit. If he has a good no-trump bid and a barely sound suit bid, he prefers the no trump. To aid in making a choice when require- ments for both no trump and suit are held, the player should, as a rule, lean toward the suit if the hand contains any of these fac- tors: 1. Two biddable suits. 2. An unstopped suit of less than three cards. 3. A singleton, even if it be an ace. 4. The biddable suit is of six cards or more. 5. The biddable suit is a five-card major. ‘There is nothing absolutely hard and fast ebout these matters; they are left to the judg- ment of the player. As a rule, after the orig- inal declaration, if the partner supports it, it is advisable to show the other one. When a hand has the qualifications for an original two no trump as against only one of a suit, or for two of a suit as against only one go trump, the higher bid should be chosen in ost all cases. a player is obliged to choose between two able suits, he should first show the higher ranking suit unless it be of only four cards and the lower ranking suit is longer. There will be rare cases when a player is justified in making an exception to this rule: If ome of the suits is incomparably stronger than the other. Again the principle applies that if & player is able to make a two bid in one decla=~ ration and only one in the other, he prefers two to the one. ¢« There is nothing absolutely fixed about the order of showing declarations when a player has three biddable suits, or a choice among three biddable suits and no trump. As a rule, ere it is best to show the highest ranking suit first, the lowest second and the interme- diate one last, if opportunities are presented to show all three. Take-outs of a player's original one bids, both suit and no trump, will be discussed next week. False Cards and True Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others ciaim the authorship of didding systems. BY SHEPARD BARCLAY Many bridgers mever get ahead. And, of oourse, they can’t unless they do. The unkindest cut of all is the one which @tves the opponents the big hands. Many a complete bust thinks he's a grand slam. Why are s wmany bridge players great travelers? Can it be because 3o many travelers play bridge? More Co-Operation The latest example of the spread of the co- operative spirit in the game is given by the Nation's Capital. All of the dyed-in-the-wool bridge enthusiasts of Washington have banded together to form the Washington Bridge League and conduct a championship tourna- ment. It is to be in the ball room of the new Shoreham Hotel on the afternoons and eve- nings of December 10, 11 and 12. A. Philip Stockvis, who launched the idea, has the co- operation of every bridge teacher and fine player in the city. It is expected that one result of the com- petition will be the stirring up of sufficient interest to have a weekly duplicate game con- ducted for all the bridge players of the city, as the nucleus of a real bridge club where all the good players can be assured of a good Big Dan and Little Dan Continued from Eighth Page front glass was covered with snow, and later he removed his goggles because he couldn’'t keep them clear of flying snow and he rode that 150 miles with a blizzard biting and tearing at his face; did it for the love of a woman young enough to be his own daughter. You can believe switch shanty gossip or you can reject it. One thing was certain: No. 8 roared through Iverness at a little better than 50 miles an hour, and the only way Big Dan had of knowing he had passed a town was the crashing and pitching of the engine over the switch frogs. The engineer’s face, purple from wind and cold in grim lines, masklike and troubled. And the fireman’s face was pitted and purple from the furnace breath of the big Pacific locomotive, a forward thrust railroad jaw that gave no sign of weakening. Into the low hills where the roadbed was marked with snow-filled cuts the mail darted like a ghost train. Around a curve and into a drift which reached to the headlight the train rumbled. Big Dan saw the drift, yelled at Little Dan and gave the engine all the throttle he had. At 50 miles an hour the engine struck, and a white column shot upward. And through the cab windows, shattering glass and frames, a mass of snow swept and cluttered the gangway. The thrust of the heavy snow pinned Little Dan to the coal gate, his back to the pressing weight. It buried Big Dan to his neck, but for a moment only. Hardly had the engine cleared the cut than Big Dan dragged himself from behind the reverse lever and attacked the snow with coal scoop and broom. “It’ll be open air from here on in, sop,” he called grimly. Little Dan grinned and fell to replenishing the fire. Big Dan wedged his heavy body be- hind the reverse lever once more. HEY took a curve at 50 miles an hour and the sudden swerving of the engine threw the fireman against the coal gate. He stood there a moment, clinging to the handhold, pant- ing, gasping for breath as a thin tritkle of blood colored his gaping mouth. The engineer glanced sharply at him and called: “Say, that broken glass must have hit you, son!” Little Dan grinned again and rubbed a grotesque line of red and black across his face with a dirty shirt sleeve. Mile posts slipped by, short, snow-capped markers by the roadside. ‘They descflbed that train afterward, opera- tors and trackmen that saw it, as a phantom train of white shooting through the night, a train closely pursued by a mass of snow which completely obliterated every mark of its wheels. A mile out of Anaconda Big Dan closed the throttle, reached for the whistle lever, gave her a service application of air brakes and mut- tered: “Number Four headin’ in,” he said. “We’ll have a clear alley from here to the terminal.” Now the switch had been closed and a white light signaled “highball” Big Dan widened on the throttle with an aching arm. Number Four was into the clear. The railroad belonged to the mail train. Down through Webster, Kirkwood, Tower Grove and the other suburban towns the mail rolled. Into the orderly confusion of speeding trains and blinking signals Big Dan jockeyed his way in the St. Louis terminal yard. They had reached the last signal, and it had changed from yellow to green at the approach of the train, when Little Dan hung up his ‘scoop to remark: “Some engineer you are, dad. Tonight you reminded me of those stories you used to tell me when I was a little shaver.” “Yep,” Big Dan grinned wistfully, “if you could have stayed little, why, I—" The mail had arrived. Big Dan and Little Dan slid out of the gangway of the big Pacific and limped wearily toward a bulletin board. “Number Four’s comin’ in on track 18,” Little Dan announced. “We'll stand here; watch for Emma.” Little Dan saw her first, straggling along with a man, saw the look in her face as she glanced up at the man who was carrying her grip. “There she is, dad,” Little Dan muttered with a kind of catch in his voice, “I'll stand back. You talk to her—see if you can get her to come back to you.” “Huh, what's that? To me?” Big Dan threw a sharp glance at the lad at his side. “What d’you mean, to me?” “Why, don't you—" “Hell, no! Don’t you—" “Gosh, no dad. Why, I thought you——" “An’ I was looney enough to think you ol “She’s with Boomer Smith, anyway,” Little Dan laughed. “Let her go. We got each other, dad. We was happy before. Let’s back up to where we was before—" “Why, son,” Big Dan slipped his throbbing throttle arm around the younger man’s shoul- der, “I thought I'd been cheatin’ you, an’—" “Aw, gee, no, dad,” Little Dan said, “you’ve been grand to me.” Some time later, as the engineer and his fire- boy threaded their way through the traffic of Eighteenth street, holding hands like a couple of girls, Little Dan remarked, “Gosh, dad, I'm hungry. Let's go in here and order a couple o’ steaks an’ French fried——" “Sure,” Big Dan agreed, “I could eat a bell cord. An’ say, son, I know now why trainmen calls us engineers ‘hogheads.” It's because we got no brains. Huh, us riskin’ our fool necks to catch a woman, an’ neither one of us wartin’ her. Huh, hogheads is right.” game whenever they drop in. The same thing can be done in any sizable community if some- body will take the initiative. Whenever a new activity of this kind gets under way it furnishes additional evidence of the fact that contract bridge is still in its growing stages. In fact, most students of the situation consider that it has only begun its great growth, which will extend on to many times the point already reached. No More Auction For more than five years the biggest seasone long bridge tournament in the East, probably in the country, has been that of the Adver- tising Club of New York, in which prominent publishers, advertising agents, advertising managers of manufacturing concerns, artists, writers, engravers and typographers have en= gaged, together with their best girls. In the beginning the game played was, of course, auction. Then a small contract section was started. Last season the contract group was much larger than the auction, which dwindled down to only a few tables. This season auce tion has been left out entirely. The compe=« tition, which began last month, and will last until next Spring, is all contract. All over the country this evolution has been going on. Auction may not be quite dead, from a club standpoint, but it is making its dying kick. A Bridge Tragedy A reader recalls a “wild argument” he had with a late friend who claimed the right to say “small slam” as soon as a game bid had been made; that he would suffer none of the penalties if not making the slam, but would be credited with the premiums should he be successful. His idea of a pleasant afternoon was to bid “four hearts, small slam.” The reader concludes: “He has since committed A Law a Week What occurs if two sides agree to play rube ber contract bridge until a certain hour, af which time one side is ahead in en unfinished rubber and also has scored a game? How is thq unfinished rubber scored? ) The score is made up as it stands, 204 points being added to the honor score of theg winnérs of a game. A hand, if started, mus§ be played out; but, if a player refuses td finish it, his opponents may elect whether be thrown out or counted at their estimate the probable result. 1 If one side plays a no trump contract, and] one of the opponents holds all four aces, caf the latter score any premium for them? 4 Problems How would you bid and play the f hand, South being the dealer with neither vulnerable? - A103 vQse3 ¢964 £106532 #8652 i AK9T $K1062 |& w|l waiise 8752 g 2| eaxkq &9 874 souTH DAQIL WA €103 SAKQJ The South hand not being strong enougl for a bid of two in the approach-forcing method, all users of that system in a recen§ duplicate game bid ome spade on it. Thi§ was passed all around and two-odd were made, Several pairs employing the new official system made a game on it. They used the artificial bid of two clubs, showing gameg strength, to which partner responded with thq denial two diamonds. South then bid two nd trumps, North the three club negative bid td keep it open. Next came three spades from South and three no trump from North to keep it open. South let this stand as the contracty West’s heart lead went to the queen. The spade 10 finesse succeeded, next came the jack and two other spade tricks, followed by four club tricks and the heart ace, making & total of four no trump. { The New Problem How would you bid and play the following hand, North being the dealer and neither side vulnerable? AKQ YVAWS54 o8 MATI0T754 48762 NORTH V76 b ® 109743 g g 93 4J105¢ V832 9J65 SOUTH o @A93 YKEQJY O AKQ2 HEK32 -