Pockets
A board contains four pockets, each designed to hold thirteen playing cards. At the beginning of a session, the boards are prepared in one of several ways:
- Predealt – the sponsoring agency has prearranged the cards in the boards, and the boards are given to the players "ready for play".
- Shuffle and play – before the start of play, each table receives a number of boards each containing 13 cards in each of its four pockets. The cards are removed from the pockets of a board, shuffled together and dealt into four equal piles. Each pile is placed into a pocket of the same board. Each board is prepared in the same manner and stacked in numerical order ready for play. The players prepare the different boards simultaneously; it does not matter which player prepares which board.
- Computer dealt – as in the foregoing, each table receives a number of boards to prepare. In addition, each board is accompanied by a hand record which identifies which specific cards are to be distributed to each hand for that board. The hand records are usually prepared in advance by a computer program using a pseudorandom number generator. The cards are removed from a board and sorted by suit. The players cooperate in dealing the cards according to the hand record and in placing the correct cards in their assigned pocket of the board. Each board is prepared in a similar manner and stacked in numerical order. The boards will be passed to another table ready for play and will not be played by those who prepared them.
No matter how the boards are prepared, they are not shuffled again during the session, and the cards in all pockets are kept face down. Sometimes, at the end of a session or the beginning of a new session, a card or cards will be placed in the board face up. This indicates that the board has not yet been prepared for the new session.
Apart from the cards, in pairs tournaments and sometimes also in teams tournaments the board also carries a travelling sheet — a paper form where players enter their scores each time the board is played. The board may contain a dedicated pocket for the travelling sheet, or it can be placed in a slot underneath the board.
Read more about this topic: Board (bridge)
Famous quotes containing the word pockets:
“They would have me as familiar with men’s pockets as their
gloves or their handkerchiefs; which makes much against my
manhood, if I should take from another’s pocket to put into
mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer’s best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)