Communication

When sitting north, as I was at yesterday's game, I feel somewhat like the hostess at a dinner party.  At times I go so far as to offer up a cheery "Welcome to Table 8!" in an effort to be hospitable and make the "guests" comfortable.  Yesterday, when another pair approached our table and my partner was gone for the moment, I made polite small talk as we waited.

"How's your game going?"  I knew this was a nice question, because these were A players and I was quite sure that their game was going just fine.

"Pretty good," was the unsurprising answer.  "How's your game going?"

"Not so good," I admitted.  "I'm playing with a new partner and we are not communicating well."

"I've been playing with (east) for 20 years, and we still miscommunicate!" We all chuckled.  At that point my partner returned to the table and unfortunately we went on to prove my point.

In addition to communicating through bids (I misread Melissa's bids and she misread mine) and through play (ditto), there are several other forms of communication happening at the bridge club.  Most are good, but with the potential to become annoying.

For example:  Small talk as you are waiting to start play can be friendly and welcoming.  However, this becomes not-so-good when it is loud (disturbing others), excessive (holding up play), or focused on a previous board (excluding the other pair).

Another example:  Talk after you play can be a check of what just happened ("where was that king?"), acknowledgement of opponents' expertise ("nice defense"), or a quick lesson ("should I have tried the finesse?").  While this talk can become a problem if it goes on for too long and holds up play, I think the bigger issue is that it sometimes becomes self-congratulatory and borders on boasting.

Interesting talk at neighboring tables is good for those players, but distracting to others if the players are just quiet enough so that you can't hear all of the details ("What happened???  Can you speak up?").  The directors are discreet and efficient at settling issues at tables, but this takes my attention away from the game when the alleged offender is a close friend or if there is a lot of agitation.  For me, some of the best talk comes after the game when we compare scores and talk about how others bid and played the difficult hands.

Yesterday's miscommunication with my partner was so befuddling that we had a hard time making sense of things such as where to go for a drink after the game.  It's tough when bridge affects your life like that!