New Vocab

As we were preparing for Swiss Teams (I don't understand how I keep getting roped into these), we found out that we would be in a round robin with two other teams.  As I stood around waiting, I noticed that Mike was loitering near by.

"Are you part of this, this trio?" I asked.  I couldn't think of "round robin," even though it popped right out as I write this.

"Yes," Mike replied.  "But don't call it a trio, it's not a musical group.  It's a three-way or a rat tail," he explained with a laugh.

I thought about these terms.  Without going into why, I don't care for the sound of a bridge three-way.  On the other hand, I detest rats and I certainly don't like their tails.  Perfect!  From now on, Swiss Team round robins are "rat tails" to me.

The other term that I learned is "field protection."  I was talking to a new friend and he said that they had placed in the first pairs game, but came in dead last in the second game.  When I asked him what happened, he said there was no field protection.  He explained that it was impossible to predict what other players were doing since there were newbys as well as seasoned players.  I thought about it and agreed.  At the home club, I have a pretty good sense of what everyone else is doing; here, I made some predictions that turned out badly.  Interesting.

And if you are wondering about how short suit game try bids are going, they aren't.  They never came up!  Plus, Jim sent me some reading material and they are more complicated than you might think.  Maybe I should go back to my original list and learn splinter bids instead.