Evening star., 1938-01-30

SEVERAL weeks ago We commented
on high-low poker. 1t is our
intention to give brief descriptions Of
this and other card games in our SUM-
day articles during the coming year.
Unlike bridge. which has highly
standardized, precise and exact rules,
the rules for most other card games
are local. In particular this applies
to high-low, and one of the most con-
fusing arguments in that game con-
stts of whether the hands speak for
themselves or if player must declare
whether he is going for high, for low
or for both.
For instance, let us consider seven-
card stud high-low. Suppose. for ex-
ample, players seven cards are
3-4-5-6-7-8 and queen. The 4-5-6-7-8
are straight pretty good high
hand. The 3-4-5-6-8 is pretty good
for low. However, If they are playing
q declaring game and he declares to
win both high and low, and it should
happen that he is beaten one way, he
now forfeits all interest in the pot.
Furthermore, we remember a very
complicated question addressed to US
once in which there were three players.
Player A declared for high only; play
ers B and c for both high and low
Player B won high. Player c won low
Player A won nothing, but claimed the
pot, anyway! When the hand was
submitted to us, we simply ruled
three-way division. and recommended
that they adopt the rule of letting
the cards speak for themselves. This
simplifies and speeds up the game.
Speaking of rulings, We ran into a
real puzzler recently when at GER
tain stage of play in a bridge game.
it was discovered that declarer had
one extra card. Upon trying to find
out why, it was discovered that de-
clarer had failed to play any card at
all to certain trick. There is nc
def1oite rule to cover this situation
since the opponents were equally at
fault with the declarer in not noticing
that he had not played. Accordingly
it wes ruled that the players should
agree as to what card should be re-
moved from the players hand, and
the play continued.
In last weeks article on deceptive
plays in bridge, We admitted that tc
Our knowledge no new play had been
discovered in the last four or five
years We went on to describe a
number of plays wherein sometimes
the dsclarer and sometimes the de-
fense can be fooled by deception.
Since then several other tricky plays
have occurred to us which we shall
add to our repertoire. For example, in
rubber bridge game the other day
declarer, who was playing four
heart contract, held seven trumps tc
the queen-l0-9, dummy singleton
small trump and the players at de-
clarer's right the king -jack-blank
When declarer led the trump from
dummy. his opponent played the jack.
declarer naturally covered with the
queen ard subsequently lost only two
trump tricks.
But, suppose his opponent had pu'
up the king tthe proper play under
the circumstances. The play of the
King could just as well have been
from ace-king- blank If declarer now
decided that the ace was blank and
played out small trump, he would
lose three tricks; if he guessed that
the jack was blank and played out
his queen, he would still hold his losses
down to two. But. in any event. the
defense would have an additional
chance of gaining an extra trick.
Here is a false-card defensive play
that evoked our admiration. De-
clarer was playing a three -no-trumr
contract. and dummy held six clubs
to the -jack-nine. with no sign
OF re-entry. Declarer led one of his
two small clubs and finessed the nine,
whereupon his opponent. who held the
king-queen-ten. won the trick with
the king. Later on, declarer finessed
the jack of clubs, and his opponent
gathered in second trick, so that
declarer actually made no trick in the
suit
Suppose, however. that our tricky
player had made the normal play
winning the first trick with the ten