September 2006 - 8

Letters to the Editor

expect to see a deal in which there
are four singleton aces about once
every 1112 years. To see a deal with
partners holding two singleton aces,
the wait would be longer: about one
every 13,266 years.
PAUL and ED SCHEIBLICH
Columbia SC

Loose connections
To the Editor:
Regarding your editorial about the
alienation of many ACBL members
from the top players (July, page 6),
the reason seems relatively straightforward.
When you went to a regional or
national in the "good old days," you
played against your bridge heroes
- in the same events, head to head,
without benefit of stratification. If I
go to an NABC today, the events that
I play in are side games for the pros
- they are off in some knockout, and
if they lose, they show up in the pairs
games.
In the early Sixties, I interacted at
the table with Charles Goren, Oswald
Jacoby, Alvin Roth, Tobias Stone,
Edgar Kaplan, Alfred Sheinwold,
Sam Stayman and so on, and when
an article appeared in the Bridge
Bulletin about their exploits, I read it
with interest because I had a connection with them.
If any of the top national players
today sat down at my table, I wouldn't
know them. I probably would recognize the name, but I wouldn't have a
face that went with it. Now, Goren or
Jacoby - everyone knew them!
HARVEY HOROWITZ
Pittsburgh PA

A modest proposal
To the Editor:
My partner and I, both in our 80s,
are consistently destroyed in our
weekly duplicate bridge gathering.
We are arguably the worst players in
all of Florida, and we are surrounded
by a very intense group (mostly
women) who delight in our fumbling
attempts.
Bill and I need help. We play with
the multiple handicaps of advanced
age, loss of concentration and sheer
stupidity. Both of us have been guilty
8

of frequent revokes, with our gleeful
opponents collecting huge penalties.
One of our opponents would lead a
spade and Bill, recognizing this as a
black card, jumps in with a club when
he has a spade in his hand. I sometimes play a heart when partner leads
a diamond-any red card would do!
A practical solution to our problems would be to create a deck
with black spades, red hearts, green
diamonds and yellow clubs. A clear
break from tradition, but why not?
Call it the four-color revoke prevention deck.
NORMAN SCHWARTZ
Naples FL

Eight ever,
nine sometimes?
To the Editor:
I've always heard that when there
are four cards including the queen out
in a suit, assuming there is a possibility of a finesse, you should eschew
the finesse and play for the drop. This
is summed up in the familiar phrase,
"Eight ever, nine never." In my reading I haven't encountered anything
further on the subject, although
perhaps I'm just not sufficiently well
read.
Anyway, I was thinking that if
the potentially finessable hand was
known to have shortness in some side
suit and the partner's hand is known
to have length, the scales would be
tipped in favor of the finesse.
I did some calculations, and it turns
out that whenever the potentially
finessable hand has two fewer known
cards than the partner's hand, the
finesse is the percentage play. If it
has one fewer known card than the
partner's hand, it's a tossup between
the finesse and the drop. If nothing is
known about the distribution of the
hand, the old adage is on target. Here
are a couple of examples.
If the potentially finessable hand
is known to have three cards in some
side suit, and the partner's hand five
cards in the suit, the probability of
the finesse working is .533 versus
.467 for the drop. If the potentially
finessable hand is known to have
three cards in some side suit and the
partner's hand has six cards in the

suit, the probability of the finesse
working is .571 versus .429 for the
drop. These situations come up fairly
frequently, so it would seem that
every bridge player should be aware
of them. To sum up: two fewer known
cards, take the finesse. Caution: This
advice is contingent on the bidding
not telling you where the queen is.
WALLY FRANCK
New Franklin MO

Heavy breathing
To the Editor:
In July (page 49), Mel Colchamiro
recommends that players use a
"pneumonic" device to help them
understand signaling. I can't even
imagine what kinds of decisions
the director would have to make if
players started bringing pneumonic
devices to the bridge table. The word
means having to do with the lungs. A
pneumonic device might be a model
of the pulmonary-respiratory system
or perhaps an arrangement of bags
and air that functioned like a lung
(a second, related, meaning of pneumonic is "similar to pneumonia").
Tricks to help with memory are
mnemonic devices, pronounced
nem-ON-ick.
MAEVE KIM
Jericho Center VT
The oversight left the editors
breathless - and determined not to
repeat the error.

Who's counting?
To the Editor:
I was quite surprised to read in
Jerry Helms' column (June, page 40)
that he suspects he has played more
than a million bridge hands.
Taking an average of seven
minutes per deal, Jerry would have
to play for more than 13 years -
24 hours a day, every day - to get
through a million of them. If he
spent a more reasonable four hours
every day playing bridge, it would
take him about 80 years to play one
million hands, and I don't think
Jerry is that old. My real point is
that one million is a bigger number
than most people imagine.
DAVID BASKIN
El Dorado Hills CA
Bridge Bulletin
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September 2006
