How did Trapp know he could make four spades on this hand?
He didn’t. He was dealt nine spades. Do you know what bridge players call a nine-card suit?
Trump!
20. I won’t go through the rest of the hand. Maybe you can figure out how to take ten tricks. I did, apparently.
I’ve made an approximate reconstruction of the hand based on what West said afterward. Look at West’s hand. It’s no wonder he doubled.
Alton could only let the opponents win three tricks. When analyzing a hand, it helps to look at each suit separately.
By leading the ♠Q, Alton was able to lose only two spade tricks. He could afford just one other loser.
Since he had no hearts, he had no heart losers. He could play a trump any time an opponent led a heart.
Even though he only had one club, he should have taken the club finesse. When it worked, he could then have discarded a diamond on the second club winner.
That would have left this diamond situation:
Alton now would have led the 3. West could have played his ace and won the trick, but that would have been Alton’s last diamond loser.
In the end, he lost two spades and one diamond. Or, counting winners instead of losers, he won seven spade tricks, two club tricks, and one diamond trick.
21. “… MUD from three small.”
“… upside-down count and attitude.”
“She was squeezed in the black suits.”
MUD refers to a defender’s choice of opening leads. There are standard opening leads from certain cardholdings. For example, if you have three cards in a suit, headed by an honor card, you would normally lead your lowest card. So from ♣K72, it is normal to lead the ♣2. If you have two small cards in a suit, you would lead the higher. So from ♣85, you would lead the ♣8. Where people tend to disagree is on what to lead from three small cards, say ♣852. MUD is one possibility. It’s an acronym for Middle-Up-Down. If you agree to lead MUD, you would lead the middle card, the ♣5. Then the next time the suit was played you’d play “up,” with the ♣8, and the third time “down,” with the ♣2.
Personally, I don’t like MUD, since the suit has to be played three times before I can figure out what’s going on, which makes my partner’s opening lead about as clear to me as the name implies.
Upside-down count and attitude is the reverse of standard signals.
In standard signals, a high card encourages and a low card discourages. If you play “upside down,” then a low card encourages. That refers to attitude.
Count signals tell your partner how many cards you have in a suit. Playing standard signals, a low card says you have an odd number of cards. A high card shows an even number of cards. Your partner is expected to count the number of cards he has in that suit, and the number of cards the dummy has in that suit, and then figure out how many cards the declarer has in the suit.
If you play “upside down,” then a low card shows an even number, and a high card shows odd.
Believe it or not, there are theoretical reasons why you would want to do this, and people have written entire books discussing the merits of different signaling methods.
“She was squeezed in the black suits” does not refer to a woman trying to fit into a bikini that’s too small for her. A squeeze occurs when a defender has to make a discard, but whatever card she chooses will give the declarer a trick. When you’re in such a situation, having to make discard after discard, it feels like you’re in an ever-tightening vise.
You can never be squeezed in just one suit. For a squeeze to work, one defender has to be put in the position of trying to protect two suits. The black suits are spades and clubs, of course.
22. 25 percent slam:
Taking a finesse is like flipping a coin. It will work 50 percent of the time. The odds of a coin flip coming up heads are 50 percent. The odds of flipping a coin twice and getting heads both times are 25 percent.
Toni was right to feel fixed. The odds of two finesses succeeding are 25 percent.
Before you feel too bad for them, however, Toni and Alton were most likely lucky on other hands. In every session of bridge, you will get some lucky boards and some unlucky ones. Bridge players tend to dwell on their unfortunate results, especially when they occurred during the final round, after all the other results were already water under the bridge (pun intended).
23. Computer hands:
The boards had been predealt. There were tiny bar codes on each card. A special card-dealing machine had dealt according to specific hand records.
You often hear bridge players complain about “computer hands,” as if a computer designed them to be especially diabolical. That is a myth. Computer hands are just as random as human-dealt hands. The reason they are used is simply to make sure that the same hands are played in every section; and there’s the added benefit of the players getting to see the hand records after the session is over.
24. The donkey hand:
I told her about the donkey hand. She didn’t think it was my fault. She said there were lots of times when it’s right to overtake your partner’s king with your ace. “You might need to unblock….”
The diagram below gives an example of when it would be right to overtake your partner’s king with your ace in order to unblock the suit.
The contract is 3NT, and West makes the normal opening lead of the ♠K. If you look at the other suits, you will see that the declarer can take plenty of tricks: three heart tricks, five diamond tricks, and three club tricks. So it is imperative that East-West take five spade tricks before the declarer wins a trick.
If East plays the ♠4, the suit will be blocked. East will win the second spade trick with the ace, but will have no more spades left and will have to lead another suit, allowing the declarer to make the contract. So the correct play is for East to overtake his partner’s ♠K with the ♠A and then lead the ♠4. This will unblock the suit and allow East-West to take five tricks and set the contract.
Opening lead: ♠K
25. Alton’s Rule:
If you can see that plan A won’t work, don’t do it, even if you don’t have a plan B.
Alton’s rule is a good one. If you’re stuck, it often helps to let the opponents win a trick. Remember, they don’t know what your problem is. They can’t see your hand. Quite often, they’ll lead a card that helps you out.
26. I started with six diamonds in my hand, and the dummy began with two, for a total of eight. That meant the opponents had five diamonds between them. If they split 3-2, I could run off six diamond tricks.
If you are missing five cards in a suit, the odds of them splitting 3-2 are 68 percent. So really, it would have been unlucky if the diamonds hadn’t split 3-2. Even if that had happened, however, I still think Alton would have gotten a “nicely played” from Trapp. An unlucky lie of the cards wouldn’t change the fact that his line of play was both accurate and elegant.
About the Author
LOUIS SACHAR is the author of the award-winning Small Steps and the number one New York Times bestseller Holes, as well as Stanley Yelnats’ Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake. His books for younger readers include There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, The Boy Who Lost His Face, Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes, and the Marvin Redpost series, among many other books. He is an avid bridge player.
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Louis Sachar
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press,
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eISBN: 978-0-375-89647-7
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Louis Sachar, The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities
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