My legs are black and blue from kicking myself. I've had to resort to wearing long pants in the 90 degree heat to hide the wounds. All because of a chapter in a book called: Watson's Classic Book on the Play of the Hand at Bridge that I've been reading.
The author of the book, Louis H. Watson, has been the cause of much consternation for me and I sometimes have mean thoughts about him after slogging through one of his incredibly thorough and detailed chapters. But since he wrote this book in 1934, chances are pretty good he has passed on so thoughts such as those would be disrespectful.
Mr. Watson has been attempting to teach me, albeit from the grave, how to play bridge, because Lord knows no one else has been able to, and I admire his patience in this endeavor. The other day I read the chapter called "Ducking." From what I gathered, ducking is the refusal to take a trick for the first few rounds to prevent the opponents from establishing a suit.
So I had the ace of clubs and I saw that the declarer had the king, queen, jack and so on in dummy. Light bulb moment! Hold up the ace so she can't get to those clubs! Yea! I saw the whole chaper in my mind. She runs out of clubs and can't get to dummy! So I let it go a few rounds and I finally played my ace with a smirk on my face and... she... trumps... it. Idiot!
I was so involved in recalling the finer points of the chapter that I forgot we were in a suit contract and not no-trump. Learning bridge for me is like a zero sum game - every time I learn something new, something else has to go.
I've decided one thing I can do is start wearing slippers to the Bridge Center to prevent further bruising on my legs in the future.
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