April 2021 - 7

IN Box

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Card-carrying players
As the owner/manager of the
Oceanside DBC in British Columbia,
I broadcast this for all of our virtual
games: " This is an ACBL-sanctioned
game. The Laws of Duplicate Bridge
apply. We are a Zero Tolerance club! "
Also, I say, " You are required to have
a completed convention card for
your partnership " before each of my
virtual games. I also include the same
messages in my monthly club update
on occasion.
I visit each table during the game
to check on those who don't have a
convention card loaded. I usually find
one or two pairs, who are informed
again that they must have a convention card, and that coming to our
games in the future without one has
consequences.
We can delay the game until everyone registered is present and to check
that players have their real names in
their BBO accounts. Why not check
on their convention cards, too?

I finally sat down and entered cards
for all my partners at once. It took me
much of an afternoon. Yes, one can
" pre-fill " and save items common to
most partnerships, but that's only a
partial solution. When I posted my
concern to BBO support, they said
they had no import function at all to
facilitate the process, which is amazing in our current online world.
Would it be too much to ask ACBL's
valued BBO partner to get one of their
developers to set up an online import
function for convention cards, using
one of several common formats?
(PDF, used by BridgeWinners, among
others, would seem a good choice.) A
pair could sign on and upload in seconds, even for a last-minute pairing.
This would remove any supportable
excuse for not having one during the
game, and allow for the approach you
advocate.
PETE MARVIN
Little Rock AR

GRANT W. BELL

Squeeze taxonomy

The February editorial on loading
convention cards made a lot of sense,
especially the part about saving
the time and frustration of asking
an opponent the meaning of bids
or card-play agreements. But the
approach you suggest in the last two
paragraphs would be much easier to
support if there were a carrot along
with the stick.
I have many BBO partners, some of
whom are casual. I suspect this is the
case for many club players. To fill out
a convention card on BBO for each
one is time-consuming drudgery, and
many times the content changes over
time, requiring edits. And sometimes
one likes to play a single game with a
new partner. It's a social game, after
all.

It was Yogi Berra who commented,
" You can observe a lot by watching. "
In bridge, you can learn a lot by
reading. In George Jacobs' column
on unusual squeezes in the February
issue, he mentioned that he (or
you) would never have heard of the
squeeze he was about to show.
Of course, Bridge Bulletin readers
will have read all the way to the
end (literally the last page) of " The
Expert Game " by Terence Reese. In
both the original version of the book,
written in 1958, (the year of my birth
when George was but a twinkle in his
parents' eyes), and the revised and
enlarged version (written by some
English palooka that sold literally
tens of copies), Reese expounds on
squeezes that were hitherto unclassified and even now are not well known.
The vice, winkle, jettison and stepping

Parksville BC

stone were classified by Reese as
variations on entry squeezes, and the
position George shows is precisely
parallel to his ending. It shows a
three-card ending where the last
trump draws, as Reese would have
it, " a reluctant concession " from the
defender - in this case, himself.
It is clear that the parallels between
George and Terence extend further
than their prowess at the bridge table.
BARRY RIGAL
aka " some English palooka "
New York NY

In defense of Reese, Shapiro
I just finished reading the article by
Barnet Shenkin in the February issue.
Pre-1965, my adulation for Terence
Reese exceeded that of the writer's
father, I think. It still remains with
me unaltered. His writing on play and
defense has never been equalled in its
proficiency or in its clarity.
I believe that I read everything written about the " scandal " attributed to
Dorothy Hayden and Alan Truscott,
among others. I also studied all of the
analyses that Reese generated in his
efforts to verify his and his partner's
innocence. Frankly, for what it is
worth, I believe that the evidence of
guilt was insufficient, his explications
were credible and that the punishment - in fact, any penalty - was
unwarranted.
I won't comment on the bridge
politics of the era, although they were
a significant factor, but I will say that
what Mr. Shenkin overlooks is the
severe prejudice regrettably caused
to Messrs. Reese and Schapiro by the
Sports Illustrated articles written
contemporaneously (attributed to
Charles Goren) which were accompanied by faked, posed photographs
in which Dorothy Hayden and Alan
Truscott had a prominent role,
notwithstanding that there actually

»

April 2021 | Bridge Bulletin | 7
April 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2021
