A night behind the Flash

Every bridge club owns a Flash. We have Flash Finnegan in Fitzwilliam and we have the Flash Smith brothers in Elm Park. Out in Malahide we have a few flash players. However some of them are slow due to human frailties. These are not the people we are talking about.

I know a lady in one club where I direct and she has severe arthritis in her hands. So for her I do my best to sort the cards for her and also sometimes get help from the table feeding the cards to her and they sort them as they finish.

Another thing that slows down play is the odd person who is recovering from a stroke or the like. Things just don't work as fast. Therefore the director helps out. Again sorting the cards and maybe a seated position.

Then we have the Bridgemate dummy. This is the person who despite being dummy has to do the bridgemate entries BEFORE putting the DUMMY on the table. We could have 2-3 tricks played while the DUMMY is sorting out the bridgemate.

Then there are those champions of DUMMY LAY. One card at a time .. slowly but surely the DUMMY materializes. The bridge teachers need to teach the good and quick methods of laying out the dummy. One card at a time ... this might take 30 seconds .. if same person is dummy all night that could be 20 minutes in a night because some of them also pause for effect.

Galligan versus Galligan bridge movie

Above the last 6 boards of a Sean v Eamon bridge movie.

And finally ..THE FLASH

every morning when you read the daily bulletin there is a small topic about slow play, “ slow play, especially habitual slow play, is a violation of law and subject to penalty” How does it work in the real world? The second session of the Kaplan Blue ribbon pairs I had the pleasure of sitting EW and following “ the Flash” First round, with 2 minutes on the clock the round is called, we try to change tables but they just started bidding their 2nd board. I call the Director. 2nd round, we only have to wait 5 minutes this time, I call the director again. 3rd round the same as well as the 4th round. 5th round is only a minute late, thanks to the hospitality break. I called the director 7 times, the only thing he told me was they had noted my concern.......In total the Flash was late 9 out of 12 rounds. (maybe round 13 as well but I didn’t care, that was the last round. how can directors let this happen? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t mind if a pair is late once in a while, some boards are more difficult, time consuming, then others. But playing match points, 2 boards a round, horrifying. Funny side fact, in one of the rounds where we started only 4 minutes late, we had a difficult board and the bidding took a least 4 minutes, so we had only 7 minutes or so left on the clock. My opponent called the director and he started pushing us....... This is insane, everybody has 15 minutes for 2 boards, no more, no less. If you can’t play by the rules, don’t play.

I am putting the link to the full article here in case any THOUGHTFUL  PLAYERS read my blog.

Full FLASH article and comments