The sun., 1919-10-05
ny n. +. FOSTER.
/ HE season is now fairly opened at
the various card clubs and ar

Il HE season is now fairly opened at
the various card clubs and ar
rangements have been made for
many interesting games the coming win
ter The Volney Club has moved to Its
new quarters at III West Forty eighth
street, and the Knickerbocker Whist
Club has finished the remodelllng and
furnishing OF its new home at rs West
Fortieth street
The K1ickerbockers are to try out a
new system OF play In their regular
Thursday night games of duplicate auc-
ton for visitors, to which all persons In
terested In auction are cordially invited
whether members OF any club or not
The new idea Is to allow four persons
to make up their own table and to re-
main at that table all evening. instead
Of progressing as in the old style dupli-
cate games. Only the " and $ scores
will be kept for the usual rubbers, and
each section will be limited to eight
tables.
At the end Of the play all the N and
8 scores will be added up, divided by the
number of tables that have played those
deals, and the difference between the
average thus found will be what the n
and pairs won OF lost during the even
ing the Il and w pair winning or losing
accordingly.
One advantage OF this system Is that
there will be no waiting. AS soon as a
table is formed II can start the play. and
everything will be cleaned up and the
scores posted by IL 80 at the latest. AS
only one score will be kept at each table
there will be no errors for the committee
to adjust 1t Is further proposed to In
troduce an automatic handicapping sys-
tenn for the seasons prizes the details OF
Nal. I'LL H. LII
1t Is not at all an uncommon thing
to meet player who considers himself
good enough to overcall his partner
simply to get the play of the
hand II you ask him why. he will tell
you quite oandidly that the average
player can be depended upon to drop at
least one trick on every hand he plays,
and that 1t Is worth while to overcall
him, for fear he might drop two or three.
While this might be considered rather
n conceited view to take OF the situation,
ts ne a aEa SndS 1say Who
portion to those who drop a trick or two
on almost every deal could be calculated
It would probably be found that the
ratio was about 10000 to /.
Some hands are what the old whist
players used to call pianos" they are so
easy to play with the soft pedal but in
the majority Of hands the average player
is pretty sure to drop trick somewhere.
which the expert would save. Then
again there are other hands in which
only very bad player would lose tricks
which even the average player would
save
The interesting hands are undoubtedly
those in which the best players differ in
their views as to how the hand should
be played. One may hear discussions OF
this sort any Thursday night at the
Knickerbocker. II there comes up a deal
in which there is a Swing" depending
on some nice point The expert Is just
as likely to drop a trick on such hands
as the average player would be to lose
tricks on average hands.
Here Is deal in which ] was particu-
larly interested last winter, because OF
the different ways in which II was man.
ased by three players who are all ac-
lnowledged to be top nctchers, although
each OF them foresaw the possibility OF
club distribution to which the average
player was blind