The next time you play bridge with a regular partner, try this:
Beyond the bare minimum amount of speech required to bid and play each hand, remain completely silent at the table.
You may find your blood pressure rising the first couple of times partner fails to give you a ruff or passes a forcing bid. But if you stick with it, I guarantee you that eventually you will find yourself calming down and, hopefully, playing better bridge.
Be honest — during a typical session, how much brain power do you waste on:
- Dissecting some mistake your partner made.
- Convincing partner that some mistake you made wasn’t really a mistake, and was actually partner’s fault.
- Getting partner to understand how well you played the last hand.
- Plumbing the depths to find something nice to say to partner after she/he mangled the last hand.
- Arguing about how 4C couldn’t possibly be anything but Gerber on a particular auction.
- Trying to impress the opponents with your wealth of bridge knowledge (and partner’s lack thereof).
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that much brain power to spare!
An added bonus — opponents will automatically assume that you and your partner must be pretty good players. (Of course, once they see how you bid and play, they may reconsider.)
Tags: Trappist Monk Rule