Silly Table Results

by Adam Beneschan, Mission Viejo, CA, USA

The question was asked about a Precision Club passed by partner:

This thread amazes me. The auction 1 P P is a legal auction. Each player at the time they made their call intended that call. It may well be that the call chosen was not the best available but it was nonetheless made.

What on earth are we trying to do by allowing it to be backed up?

The answer was:

As near as I can tell, the goal is to avoid generating silly table results.

Well, if the goal is to avoid silly results, there are two steps necessary to achieve this goal:

1. Bar me from playing in any bridge event, and
2. bar just about everyone else in the league.

Really . . . it's not often that I play a session of bridge without generating at least one silly table result due to failure to concentrate. I did a doozy in Vancouver, where after my partner's reopening double, I decided that we probably had enough to beat their 5 spades enough tricks and passed---but they were only in three spades. No, I didn't misread their bidding card, I just fell asleep and started thinking sideways. So I guess I should have called the director when I had to make an opening lead (which was about the time I realized what a bonehead thing I'd done) and said, "Part of the goal of the game is to avoid silly table results, and I just created a silly table result, so can I have my pass back?" Plus, I could have invoked field protection: "My action just harmed the field by giving this pair an undeserved top, which hurt all the other pairs sitting in their direction through no fault of their own, so fairness demands that you allow me to take my pass back."

I think I'll start doing this every time I have brain damage that causes me to forget what system we play, or miscount trump so that I forget to draw them all, or make a stupid play that obviously exposes my partner to a strip squeeze. Oh, wait, these things aren't "silly" enough? Hmmm, so the goal is to penalize people who make "smart" mistakes but to shower sympathy on those who make "really dumb" mistakes like thinking your partner's 1 bid looks like a green pass card or not noticing that you've called the wrong card from dummy. The penalty for making a mistake should be inversely proportional to how stupid the mistake is. OK, makes sense to me.

Sheesh.

Editor's note:

• This article first appeared on rec.games.bridge
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