The Game Player

by Rafael Yglesias

  “Except for the few truly rich kids,” Brian told me, “they’re all good, good players. All of them play out the hands beautifully. Their weakness is bidding. And the fact that some of them just get destructive about money.” He paid the huge security for our apartment and furnished all the rooms, except for mine, within a week. One by one our friends were led into this bourgeois paradise and their reactions were predictably snotty. No matter how apolitical our class was, their revulsion at materialism was no less intense than the student rebels of the late sixties, perhaps even more so, since their lack of opposition made them more vulnerable to guilt. Oddly, it was I who resented their cracks about suburbia, about us being a nuclear family; Brian would sit calmly, with the sunset glowing through the window behind him, his hair hardly any longer than when I first met him, often with a day’s growth of his thick black beard, and listen to their sarcasm. His smile would be accompanied by a quick, quiet chuckle as he listened to a long-haired critic sit in one of his director’s chairs and smoke his grass.

  I had, of course, mixed myself up with the other literature students at Yale and, despite their disgust at my living quarters, soon they made it their watering hole. Whether it was because I subscribed to The New York Review of Books, or because it was such a fertile subject for their wit, I don’t know, but Brian never complained of or curtailed their visits.

  Again, oddly, I would. Sometimes bitching so vehemently that it might seem to an observer that they were Brian’s friends. He would always say, “Howard, you want to head all their magazines, don’t you? You don’t want to lose the stature of being the only published writer in the school.”

  “How can I lose that?”

  “By not having all this,” he said with the exaggerated pose of a presenter. “What a wonderful reinforcement! They can’t fathom your living in this any more than your being published.” It was largely Brian’s great capacity for savoring the jealousy of other students that encouraged me to continue work on a follow-up article that I hoped the Times would take. After my two-hour session with the piece in the evening, I would join Brian in his room.

  The decoration of his bedroom surprised me. He had been lavish with the other rooms: two couches for the living room and a big rug, a large square butcher block table with six appropriate chairs, a sufficient number of lamps for one to be able to read in any corner of it, and similar expenses for the foyer, kitchen, and bathrooms. But there was no rug in his room, just the sometimes dizzying parquet floor, no fancy thin Venetian blinds, just the thick ugly square ones, usually pulled all the way up. He had a bed, to be sure, but it had no spread so that his gray blanket (always neatly tucked in all around) and two fluffed pillows resembled an army cot. No bookcases or shelves, no radio or stereo, no pictures or posters on the walls, only two lamps, one of them a Tensor beside his bed, the other on his desk—the only big piece of furniture in the room. It was a slab of oak set on two heavy legs that were joined by a long piece of wood. Unless in use there was never anything on it, not even an unpaid Con Ed bill. All his papers, and his few books, were kept in two large, locked, bright yellow file cabinets that stood against the wall behind his bed. One of them also served as a night table.

  It was from the other file cabinet that he would take out the bridge books and decks of cards for us to practice. He taught me a system of bidding that was quite new at the time—the Precision System. Brian relished the name, he would say it over and over during his lectures as if it were a lullaby: “In Precision, this problem wouldn’t arise. In Precision, every bid from here on out is a cue bid.” It was a fascinating system that people had been working on for nearly a decade. It held my interest, distracting me from any anxiety about the amount of money I would soon be gambling for.

  Each night, we went through one of the chapters. Brian arranged a deck of cards to fit the example hands in the book, and drilled me on the bids, not by a recitation of memorized openings and responses, but by supplying me with the abstract requirements and then giving me a hand to bid. He never praised me when I was right, and when wrong, he merely said so without impatience and then asked me why I made my bid. I always answered that I had memorized the bid incorrectly.

  “You mustn’t do it by rote. Understand the logic of it. Precision is immensely logical. Spades and hearts, the major suits, are never opened unless you have at least five of them. That’s so an eight-card fit can be found easily. And any hand over sixteen points is opened with one club so that you have more bidding space.”

  “That includes a hand that has five cards in hearts or spades?”

  “Yes. You open one club on any hand that has sixteen points or more.”

  “What if you have a good club hand with less than sixteen points or more?” I asked. But Brian would not answer questions whose nature was settled in later chapters. He did not give a brief summary of the overall system. We proceeded bid by bid, a chapter a night, and that took exactly fourteen nights.

  Then he would deal out hands randomly, look at all four, and choose one for me to bid. About every other hand, dissatisfied with the deal, he would exchange some of the cards in one hand with others in the hand he gave me. For five nights, they were all one-club opening hands, though, of course, that meant they varied greatly. I had the most trouble with them because Brian favored an asking bid system for positive responses to one club. Asking bids are a kind of code that have no relationship to the actual bid, so logic was a poor tool for remembering them. They demand memorizing and Brian’s mnemonics for triggering my memory were useless, so I had to spend hour after hour, usually in the morning when alone, saying them out loud and checking my answers against the book.

  Meanwhile, in the evenings, we went on to the other bids in the system.” I had little trouble with them since they all possess elegant niceties of logic that comfortably fit my mental pattern. The whole process took a month and even then I had never actually played a hand of bridge against real opponents. As for my ability to play out a hand, though Brian taught me card counting and simple techniques of finesse, he refused to concentrate on this aspect, saying it was better to allow me to play for a while and discover particular weaknesses to work on.

  He came home Sunday afternoon with a folding bridge table, double sets of cards with huge numbers, and a scoring pad. I was amazed by the large-type cards and, thinking I was eager to play, asked when we would.

  “In about an hour and a half,” he said as he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  “What?” I yelled after him, so panicked by the suddenness that I was too scared to follow him and made sure he wasn’t kidding. I sat alone and looked at the paraphernalia he had brought as if it might attack me. When he returned, it was with two sandwiches and two Cokes.

  “Eat slowly,” he said. “I put mustard on the corned beef, is that all right?”

  I stared at my sandwich while he began his; he ate steadily, chewing each piece so methodically that I was tempted to hit him and force a swallow. He looked up to open his can of soda and saw I wasn’t eating.

  “You should eat, kid. It’ll be a long night.”

  “Are we playing for ten cents a point?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Paying the rent has got me down to less than a hundred bucks and my parents won’t send me a check for two weeks.”

  I could hear the soda go down as he swallowed. He belched. “So? If you lose, I’ll cover you. If you win, you won’t need any money.”

  “If you pay for me they’ll know we’re partners.”

  He laughed. “They know we’re partners. I never conceal anything, Howard. Never. We’ve got anywhere between four and eight people coming over and they all know that you and I have been studying Precision.” He took another bite and nodded towards my sandwich. I picked it up and reluctantly began to eat. I had already gulped half of it nervously when he had finished masticating that one bite and said, “They don’t believe it will do us any good. Also, these guys want to win more than they want money
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  “But it’s the same thing, Brian.”

  “No, if they cared about money, they would play against weaker players than us. They’re willing to drop a bundle attempting to prove they’re the best players.”

  “Do they play Precision?” I asked.

  “No, but they don’t play standard Goren. They have all kinds of added conventions and two of ’em play Acol.”

  “I don’t know anything about those systems.”

  “Nor do they know anything about Precision.” He smiled at me. “Howard, there’s a rule in bridge that allows you to ask the partner of a person who has bid, what that bid means. And they have to tell you. So you just ask them and they’ll tell you.”

  Four players arrived immediately after we had set up the table. I hadn’t met any of them before, but I assumed the fellow called Charlie was the one whom Brian had complained of. We arranged that Josh and Andy would play a rubber against Brian and me and then the winners would play the extra pair.

  Josh was a big fellow, over six feet tall and close to two hundred pounds, muscled and surprisingly tanned. He gave me a big smile when we cut for the deal and he pulled an ace. “Ah! It starts badly for you fellows.”

  “It’s true, Josh,” Brian said. “The way you deal it may take hours to finish the first hand.”

  Josh talked while he dealt, telling Brian, as he neared the end of the deck, that he had heard Brian and I were tough customers with our new precise way of playing. This broke everybody up except for Brian and me. Brian looked at him coolly and said, “Bid your hand.” There was silence while we arranged our hands and then Josh said loudly, “Well, I guess I’m gonna give you guys a break and pass this.”

  I knew everyone’s eyes must have been on me while I stared at my hand, double-checking my calculations. I had two aces (eight points), one king (three points), a queen and a jack (another three points), giving me a total of fourteen points. I didn’t have five cards in hearts, spades, or diamonds, but I had five clubs. This is a hand that can be bid in two ways, depending, oddly, on how many diamonds you have. I had only two. I cleared my throat and looked Brian straight in the eyes. Go: “Two clubs.”

  “Oh, shit,” Josh said.

  “Wait a minute, Josh,” Andy said. “It’s a different system. What does it mean, Brian?”

  “Basically,” Brian said, “he has twelve to fifteen points, no five-card major, and, at least five clubs.” Andy nodded, while Josh said it was a ridiculous bid, and then passed. Brian’s response was immediate: “Two diamonds.”

  “Probably means he has six spades,” Josh said.

  “Are you gonna bid?” Brian asked him.

  “I’ll pass,” Josh said, imitating a child’s whining tease, almost going so far as to stick his tongue out.

  In fact, Brian’s bid did not say anything about diamonds. It was a request for me to name a four-card major if I had one, otherwise I was supposed to bid two no-trump. “Two hearts,” I said.

  Andy nodded. “Pass.”

  “Four hearts.” Brian closed his fan of cards with a quick snap. We all passed. It was the first hand of bridge I had played in my life. I stared at Brian’s hand when he laid it out as dummy after Andy had tossed his lead onto the table; the card settled slightly twisted—a roguish challenge. In fact, the contract was very solid, with only two sure losers, and a simple finesse of the queen in trump. But I wanted to be absolutely sure of everything, so I counted and recounted tricks, trump, and the top honors that had been played, until Josh was beside himself with impatience and contempt. “Trumps are all out except for the one left in your hand,” he finally screamed at me.

  “Damn it, Josh!” Brian yelled so unexpectedly that I heard one of the two kibitzers drop something. “I told you he had never played before. He’s playing about twice as fast as any beginner I’ve ever seen.”

  This exchange helped me, slapping me out of the terrors that would overwhelm me every few seconds: that I had forgotten something or that my calculations were wrong. Brian’s compliment, the first I had ever received from him, was like a blessing. The finesse failed, giving Josh a momentary thrill of thinking we would go down, but we made our ten tricks exactly. The hand was worth twelve dollars.

  I picked up my next hand eagerly and was greeted by a wasteland. I had five points. Andy passed and Brian bid one spade. Josh, who hadn’t said a word since Brian’s admonishment, thought about his hand for a long minute and then passed. I passed, of course, and Andy shrugged before leaving us in the contract. After Brian just barely made the bid, Andy and Josh reconstructed their hands, deciding they should have made a partial on the hand. It was apparently Josh’s fault, which he admitted cheerfully, saying, “Who the fuck cares if we missed a two-diamond contract?” But our one spade was worth thirty points and that brought us to fifteen dollars in winnings. I almost wished that the game would end there.

  The next hand Brian and I were out of the bidding while Andy and Josh named all four of the suits before landing in three no-trump. We laughed when Josh finally made this bid, Brian saying, “Sounds like a good idea.”

  They made four no-trump, for a total of one hundred and thirty points, which knocked our winnings down to two dollars.

  Then a frightening thing happened. After three passes, Brian opened one club and, while I was happily calculating that his sixteen minimum points added to my ten gave us enough to make game, Josh bid one spade. I looked at Josh quickly to see if he was joking (though I knew he wouldn’t), because one spade was what I intended to bid. Indeed, I realized with a chill, what else could I bid? I knew there was provision for this sort of situation, something having to do with doubling or cue-bidding the opposition’s suit. Or was it, when you can cover their suit, that you bid one no-trump?

  I could not remember.

  After a few moments, my silence was noticed. I heard them rustle as they glanced at me. Doubling wasn’t it, I decided. It was either cue-bid the suit or bid one no-trump. Their looks became stares and I heard Josh’s voice boom, “Bollixed you up, huh?”

  “You can’t chatter.” It was Brian’s cold voice. “We might deduce from it.”

  Maybe I should pass, I thought with relief. No, came the answer, we should have a game with our points.

  “He looks like he’s going to pass out,” said Josh with a cruel laugh.

  “Two spades,” I said immediately, looking at Josh furiously.

  “Quiet,” Brian was in the middle of saying when I bid.

  “Whoa,” Josh said in answer to my angry glance.

  “Two spades?” Andy asked. “What does that mean, Brian? He’s got a spade suit?”

  Brian’s eyes watched me with amusement. “He can’t mean what his bid does. So my answer would confuse you.”

  “Why don’t you let us be the judge of that?” Josh said.

  “All right,” Brian drawled, twisting the left side of his mouth in a smile. “He has opening points and no more than a doubleton in spades, so that he can support any of the other three suits.”

  “Really?” I said, and the room exploded, the kibitzers and Brian laughing, Josh yelling something about it being amateur night, and Andy telling me that I wasn’t allowed to comment.

  “He might mean it,” Andy said to Brian, “except that he has less than opening points. Since he passed, you’d know that.”

  “Yeah,” Brian said, and seemed ready to go on, but he stopped. “Well, your guess is as good as mine. We never discussed the meaning of that bid in this situation.”

  “Come on,” Josh said. “Let’s go. I’m getting old here.”

  “I pass,” Andy said. “I’ve been doing it all night, why stop?”

  “Two no-trump,” Brian said, his voice in slight inflection as if it were a question.

  “Pass,” Josh said, his voice a growl.

  “Three no-trump,” I said, and looked at Brian. He smiled intimately and shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes.” When I laid my hand down, Josh tapped me on the shoulder.
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  “You bid the opposite of your hand,” he said. But I was watching Brian’s reaction and he was arranging my cards with quick, happy gestures, smiling broadly. He looked at the hands for a short time and said, “We’ve got it.”

  “Do you mind going through the formality of putting us away?” Josh said.

  Brian’s only answer was to pull a card from the dummy and play the rest of the hand quickly, slapping the cards down and sweeping them up in short, insolent movements. When it became obvious that Brian had only a singleton in spades, Andy said, “Your two no-trump bid was a pure guess! What if Howard did only have a singleton spade, instead of five to the ace-queen?”

  “You bozos would have doubled,” Brian mumbled. “You’re too greedy to stay quiet.” We made an overtrick, and that, with the five hundred bonus for winning the rubber brought our total to seven hundred and eighty; subtracting their score of one hundred and thirty, gave us a net of six hundred and fifty: sixty-five dollars in forty-five minutes.

  We played for seven straight hours. By the time Brian and I had lost the second rubber, two other players had arrived, allowing us to set up another table. The winners from the dining table would move up to the folding table, the losers moving down, and for the first two or three hours, the movement from table to table was democratic, none of the pairs able to hold table one for longer than two rubbers.

  Money was exchanged at the conclusion of each rubber, and only Brian kept a running total of how much we were ahead or behind, the others having noted the amount they came with and willing to wait until the end for the total.

  I was surprised at how helpless we were against luck. It had never occurred to me, because of the scientific nature of my studies with Brian, that we were gambling. It hit me when Brian and I sat through three consecutive rubbers at the losers’ table unable even to slow the pace of the three other partnerships. They rolled over us with straight games (for which the bonus is raised to seven hundred points) and two of them made slams (for which there are bonuses ranging from five hundred to fifteen hundred points). We were out-scored by forty-five hundred points, which came to four hundred and fifty dollars. We started to do a little better after that, but when four hours had gone by, and we were down roughly seven hundred dollars, I felt sick and disoriented, especially since Brian wasn’t reacting to our losses, except to show slight irritation at the cards. We were waiting for the other table to finish a rubber when I got a chance to speak to Brian alone in the kitchen.