The Bridge World - Features That Appear Irregularly

Features That Appear Irregularly

Some features that do not appear according to a fixed schedule, or that have run their course:

• Appeals Committee: A series of articles that discusses how a committee should apply the Laws and Proprieties to adjudicate rulings that have been appealed by the players.

• That's Ridiculous: Collections of newspaper columns, submitted by the TBW readership, that mis-analyze hands. (The column title was adapted from a television program, That's Incredible!, then-popular in the US.)

• Technical innovations first appearing in TBW: a highly abbreviated list includes the Grand Slam Force, Stayman, lebensohl, PLOB, suit-preference signals, the unusual notrump, Puppet Stayman, and CRASH. (Blackwood is not included in this list: although Easley Blackwood Sr. submitted an article on his convention to TBW, it was rejected – presumably because it conflicted with the Culbertson 4-5 Notrump convention.) A technical innovation in the play of the cards is now rare: many advanced coups were known to whist players during the 19th century. However, Geza Ottlik's The Quest and The Way It Is advanced readers' awareness of card play, particularly in the areas of elopement and squeeze play, well beyond levels previously discussed in the bridge literature.

• Several times each year, humorous, bridge-themed fiction appears in TBW. Authors such as Frank Vine, Robert Gray, Victor Mollo, David Bird, Danny Kleinman and Nick Straguzzi, and E. S. Baer (a pseudonym of Edgar Kaplan's), among many others, have contributed satirical short stories with points concerning bidding, the play of the cards, and bridge personalities.