Claiming

When I was just a teenager, I had a bad experience playing rubber bridge against some little old ladies. The contract was cold, and I made a sort of hand-waving claim, and RHO started in on "you touched that card, and if you're leading that then..." and the end result was that my cold contract didn't make because I wasn't careful about making my claim. You could say that she was a nasty old bugger, and you would probably be right, but the truth is it really was my fault. Those days (more than thirty years ago), playing rubber bridge in England, the rules were on her side. You have to play by the rules. I was careless, and I deserved to pay the price (although I wish I hadn't been playing for money!).

So fast-forward: what do I do now? When declarer, I don't touch dummy's cards at all, I call them. When I plan to claim, I nearly always draw trumps first, and/or play enough tricks that the remaining line of play is super-simple. The time "wasted" by playing two or three or four extra tricks is well compensated by virtually never having to answer a question about my line of play. And I'm always careful to clearly state the line of play. You're required to do that by the laws of duplicate, but I'm continually amazed by the number of declarers that show their hand and just say "they're all there" or something like that. It may well be true, but you don't make a claim that way. And if my line involves a squeeze or something that (while guaranteed to work) is not blindingly obvious to a beginner, I usually just play the hand out. It's easier, it really is.

OK, rant over. What prompted that? Well actually, nothing bad. I just noticed a coincidence. I've had two hands in the past year or so where, at trick two or three, the remaining line of play was just draw trumps and cash winners. So on these two occasions, I made an exception to my own rule given above, and claimed. Both times, my stated line of play began "I'm drawing trumps, and I can draw trumps even if they're 5-0". Both times, believe it or not, LHO interrupted at this point to show me the five trumps in his/her hand. And as best I can recall, all the times I drew trumps before claiming, they never were 5-0.

There are times when I think there might really be a goddess of bridge, with a really twisted sense of humor.