Bridge Game Stories to Make You Laugh

‘Would you care for a friendly game of cards?’

‘No, let’s play bridge.’

‘Are you going to play in the Individual Championship?’

‘No, of course not. Do you think I want twenty-seven different partners mad at me?’

The late Keith McNeil was one of the best-known and best-liked characters on the Australian bridge scene. He acquired international fame through his often hilarious, invariably witty Bidding Forum, a regular feature of Australian Bridge magazine. While he was the regular bridge columnist for the Adelaide Daily Mail he recited, tongue-in-cheek, his methods for dealing with players with whom he was not on the best of terms.

1. If you dislike someone, do not write up their good hands.

2. If you really dislike someone, write up their bad hands.

3. If you dislike someone intensely, write up someone else’s bad hands but attribute them to the player you dislike.

4. If you absolutely and utterly detest someone, write up their good hands but attribute their fine play to their partner.

‘When did you learn to play bridge? I know it was this morning but what time this morning?’

Definition of a bridge expert : a player who is so knowledgeable about bridge that he can criticise his partner’s game without exposing his own vast ignorance.

‘How should I have played that hand?’

‘Under an assumed name.’

‘Why are you so glum?’

‘The doctor told me I can’t play bridge.’

‘Aha. So he’s played with you, too?’

‘I have this terrible inferiority complex about my bridge.’

‘Don’t concern yourself.’

‘No?’

‘No. Your bridge really is inferior.’

Question : What do you have when you have four players arguing with each other, all shouting at the same time, all objecting to a ruling made by the Director?

Answer : A din of inequity.

Sam Goldwyn, the famous motion picture producer, once scolded his bridge partner for overbidding her hand.

‘But how could I know you had nothing?’ she asked.

‘Didn’t you hear me keeping still?’ was the reply.

The term ‘plotch’ is bridge slang for a dreadful mistake, a blunder. After two serious errors, declarer contrived to make yet another mistake. Canberra’s Bill Gray, who can spin bridge yarns all day long, was defending and announced : ‘Aha. The plotch thickens.’

At a regional championship in Ottowa, a local player opened with 1 Diamond and the partner of the visiting expert made a jump overcall of 2 Spades. The third player doubled.

The expert waited for some clarification of the double but none was forthcoming. After stewing for some time, he turned to the opener and complained testily : ‘At the clubs where I play, we alert our negative doubles.’

The opener turned to the expert and replied demurely : ‘At the clubs where I play, we don’t play negative doubles.’

Expert and his partner went -800 in 2 Spades doubled.

WEST : ‘Oh dear, partner. North is declarer again. Now you’re going to have to find another bad lead.’

South, writing in the score : ‘5 Diamonds doubled – by East – down four vulnerable – minus 1100.’

North, to East : ‘You got yourselves in a knot there.’

East : We certainly did. Our path was paved with nothing but good conventions.’