The Cardturner

by Louis Sachar

  "Aces and spaces . . ."

  "I had nine points, but it was all quacks. . . ."

  "Odd-even discards?"

  You often hear bridge players complain about aces and spaces. An example would be a hand like this:

  Notice all the space between the ace and the next-highest card in that suit. True, a ten or a nine would be nice, but I like aces too much to ever complain about the spaces.

  A quack is a queen or a jack. Nine points refers to the hand evaluation system that Toni taught to Alton. Charles Goren developed this system over fifty years ago, and while it's still used today, most experts agree it is not entirely accurate. Aces and kings are slightly undervalued, and queens and jacks, or quacks, are slightly overvalued.

  Odd-even discards refers to a type of defensive signal. If a defender discards an odd card (3, 5, 7, or 9), it means she wants her partner to lead that suit. For example, if she discards the 5, she's asking her partner to lead a diamond the next time he gets a chance. If she discards an even card, the 4 for example, she's telling her partner she doesn't like diamonds.

  The problem with this system is that sometimes you only have even cards in suits you like and odd cards in suits you don't like.

  If you double, you're saying you think your opponents bid too high. If they make their contract, they'll get double the points, but if you set them, then you'll get double the points.

  It's more complicated than that, but the general idea is correct.

  The chart below shows how many points you get for setting a contract doubled or undoubled. The vulnerability applies to the side that bid the contract, not the side that doubled it.

  I stopped the chart after down-seven, but you can actually go down as many as thirteen tricks on a hand (if you bid a grand and don't take any tricks). If you're wondering if any idiot actually has gone down as many seven tricks on one hand, yes, I have.

  Yarborough:

  The odds of being dealt a Yarborough (no card higher than a nine) are 1,827 to one.

  "Bidding's not that hard, once you learn the basics. Trapp and Gloria use a complicated system, but you don't have to do all that. You just have to know which bids are game-forcing, which ones are invitational, and which ones are just cooperative."

  Using the Goren point-count system, you should bid game if you and your partner have a total of 26 points. So if your partner opens the bidding (promising at least 13 points), and you have 13 points in your hand, you know you belong in game. Your partner, however, doesn't know this, and it's your job to let him in on the secret.

  A game-forcing bid is one that tells your partner, "I want to bid game on this hand, so you must not pass until we have done so."

  An invitational bid is one that invites game. Again, your partner made an opening bid, but this time you have about 10 to 12 points. You'll make a bid that invites your partner to bid game if she has a little extra.

  A cooperative bid shows about 6 to 9 points. Your partner opened the bidding, and you have too many points to pass, but you're not interested in bidding game unless she has a lot extra.

  There are many different bidding situations, but the key to good bidding is understanding whether a bid that you or your partner makes is game-forcing, invitational, or cooperative.

  "After going into the tank for ten minutes, he leads a club, giving the declarer a sluff and a ruff! Then, in the postmortem, he asks me if there was something he could have done differently. ‘Yes,' I tell him. ‘Play any other card.' "

  To go into the tank means to think for a long time before playing a card or making a bid. To ruff means to win a trick by playing a trump. To sluff means to discard. A sluff and a ruff occurs when a defender leads a suit in which both declarer and dummy are void, and where both hands have trump cards. It allows a declarer to ruff in one hand and to discard in the other, often giving her an extra trick. For example:

  Spades are trump. It looks like you have to lose a club trick, but if an opponent leads a heart, you will get a sluff and a ruff. You can discard a club from one hand and trump it in the other. This will allow you to win all the rest of the tricks. (Try it!)

  The directors had a very specific rule for each situation. So not only were these mistakes really dumb, I realized, but they all had happened many times before.

  And I've made every single one of them.

  the two idiots at table seven:

  It was around this point that I noticed the blond guy squirming in his chair. When Toni won the next trick, the bushy-haired guy started squirming too.

  If you see an opponent squirm, that's always a tip-off that he's being squeezed. If you're ever in such a situation, try not to squirm. Try to decide on your discards before it's your turn to play, and then calmly play as if you don't have any problem. Often a declarer won't realize you're being squeezed unless your body language tells him.

  "First she squeezed me out of my exit cards . . . and then she endplayed me."

  An endplay is when a defender is put in a position of having to lead a card, but whatever card he leads will give the declarer a trick.

  There are many different kinds of endplays. Here's one example. These are everybody's last two cards.

  If anyone else leads a club, East will be able to win a club trick (try it). But if East is on-lead, he is endplayed. If he leads the J, dummy's Q will win the trick, and then the declarer will win the last trick with the A. If instead East leads the K, it will lose to the A, and then the Q will win the final trick.

  So Toni (or Annabel) first squeezed him out of his exit cards, meaning he had to discard all the cards he could have led safely, and then she allowed him to win a trick, endplaying him in some manner.

  Pages 177-78, the IMP chart:

  Did you notice that as you win by larger and larger amounts, you get fewer and fewer additional IMPs? The chart is designed this way so that one peculiar hand won't decide an entire match. Rather, the winner is the team that consistently does better.

  I knew what it meant to . . . pull trump.

  To pull trump means to lead the trump suit and keep leading it until the opponents don't have any trump cards left.

  Pages 218-19, Deborah in the closet:

  We bridge players are unusual, to say the least. When the average male reads Deborah's story, he no doubt wishes he could have been there when she stepped out of the closet. When I read it, I wished I could have been there too, but I wanted to see that bridge diagram! If it had Trapp stumped, it must have been a very interesting hand.

  the post-mortem hand:

  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!

  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.

  ". . . MUD from three small."

  ". . . upside-down count and attitude."

  "She was squeezed in the black suits."

  MUD re
fers to a defender's choice of opening leads. There are standard opening leads from certain card-holdings. 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.

  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).

  Pages 267-268, 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.

  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 on the opposite page 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.

  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.

  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 internationally acclaimed 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. He is an avid bridge player.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  A Note from the Author

  1 My Favorite Uncle

  2 A Turn for the Worse

  3 By the Way

  4 And, And, And . . .

  5 Cliff

  6 Are You Sure?

  7 Teodora

  8 The Club

  9 Shuffle and Play

  10 An Apology of a Sort

  11 Tiger Woods's Caddy

  12 The Basics

  13 In the Garbage

  14 National Championship

  15 The Perfect Partner

  16 The Milkman and the Senator's Wife

  17 Finesse

  18 The Housing Crisis

  19 Captain and the Radio

  20 Toni Castaneda

  21 Fixed

  22 The Blind Lady Bowler

  23 Bidding

  24 My Sick Fantasy

  25 Lab Rats Pushing Buttons

  26 Yarborough

  27 A Phone Call

  28 Toni's Grandmother and President Nixon

  29 A Silver Ice Bucket

  30 The Life of the Party

  31 Smoking Ears

  32 A Singing Pig

  33 The Great Bridge Detective

  34 Director, Please!

  35 Toni and Cliff

  36 Synchronicity

  37 Trapp's Closest Living Relatives

  38 Thank You, Partner

  39 Two Idiots at Table Seven

  40 The Subconscious Mind

  41 Entourage

  42 Annabel and Ike

  43 IMPs

  44 The Milkman's Clothes

  45 Thugs in Business Suits

  46 Nixon

  47 Teodora's Tea

  48 Quack of Clubs

  49 A Monkey and a Typewriter

  50 Ducking Smoothly

  51 A Very Scared Little Girl

  52 Deborah in the Closet

  53 A Fresh Start

  54 Transfer Bids

  55 Post-mortem

  56 Welcome to My World

  57 Ninety-three, Ninety-one

  58 In the Pantry

  59 Looking at Colleges

/>   60 Not a Wet Sock

  61 They Need Us

  62 Twenty-five Percent Slam

  63 A Long Hesitation

  64 The First Hand

  65 The Donkey Hand

  66 The Beer Card

  67 A Message from Afar

  68 Signals

  69 Q

  70 Canned Peas

  71 Transportation

  72 The Final Session

  73 The Final Table

  74 The Final Hand

  75 Talk About Wow

  76 Philosophically Bent

  APPENDIX

  About the Author