St. Paul daily globe., 1896-04-19
LEADING FROM A TENACE.

One of the favorite ideas of the moderate
player is that it is losing whist to open q suit
containing tenace. He will lead short suit
and trust to lIaAk to find his partner with
strength rather than lead from suit contain
ing ace, queen or ace, jack or king, jack.
This idea Is not entirely confined to moderate
players, although we venture to suggest that
the habit is strong badge Of mediocrity; no
player ought to be considered in the first rank
who refuses to lead from ace, queen and others
when it is the only suit he has, or by far the
best suit. We admit that the situations are
frequent where 1t would be advantageous to
have your adversary lead the suit for you
but the average opponent Is not sufficiently
corsiderate Of your feelings to do this, and
even If he does you have probably lost enough
tricks by leading up to his partners strong
suit to recompense him for his kindness In
other words, 1t may not be particularly de-
sirable to lead away from a tenace, but 1t is,
as general rule, infinitely more disastrous to
lead from weak suit up to the tenace in the
other fellows hand. We have known players
whose only object in life, apparently, was to
catch a king somewhere; IL they succeeded in
doing that, they were amply repaid for any
number Of tricks lost in the effort; but these
players, we think, have generally found the
king on the wrong side. We are perfectly well
aware that we are laying the foundation for a
TRADE from the able pen Of Mr.. Foster, for
one OF the pet theories Of the game which the
Manhattan team claim to play is to never lead
from suit containing tenace, but even this
dire prospect does not deter us from exnress
ing our opinion against what we believe to be
thoroughly trtck-losng line of play And In
TINS connection we desire to say that our opin-
ions. as given in this column. are based nm
experience In actual play. and not on theories.
or situations made up for the sole purpose of
illustrating point.
THE MANHATTAN TEAM.
Mr.. Foster claims that his short suit argu-
ments are more than substantiated by the
success OF the Manhattan team in various
recent contests between New York and
Brooklyn clubs. His team has been at the
top In all OF these matches, we believe. and
we pardon him for giving the credit of these
victories to his system rather than to
strength of the individual PLAYERS of the
team 1t Is hardly fair for us, at this dis
tance, to say that the Manhattan PLAYERS are
SO much stronger than the other BROOKLYN
and New York men, but neither does the
success of the former team convince lis of the
merits Of their system. difference in svs-
TENS is OF very little Importance when COM
pared to difference in the caliber OF nIav-
ers and we think it entirely possible that
New York may have at last succeeded in
getting together team Of whist PLAYERS who
are somewhere near the equals of the best
players of other cities in the country. We
sincerely hope that this is the case, for at
no time since the formation of the American
Whist league has New York or Brooklyn been
able to furnish a team that would make any
showing in a national tournament. There
has been no sufficient reason for this state
of affairs, and it is more than probable that
| the next congress will witness a change,
The following deal occurred in the last
| Gordon trophy match
North,spades, X, Q. 8; hearts, K 5, q
cluos, q, Z, z; diamonds, Q, 10, s. 5. East
Spades, j, 10, 8, Z, 4, 8; hearts, A. J. 10
clubs. 10; diamonds, 6, 8, 2. South-Spades
z: heart, Q, 4: clubs. X, J. 8. 8. 8, 4, g.
diamonds. A, X, ]. West-Spades, A. g. 6,
hearts, 9, 5, Z, 6. 8; clubs, A, 9; diamonds
9. 2, 4. Seven OF diamonds trump. Leader
| North.
lows: