Notes from the seamy underbelly of the bridge world

New Minor Forcing

She Made Me to Do It

She was just a broad. The kind you could pick up at any two-bit bridge club in the city. But we were going to be sitting opposite each other for 27 hands, and I thought I should get some things straight from the beginning.

“Okay, doll,” I said. She gave a little start. Maybe she didn’t like being called “doll.”

“When you open a minor and I respond with a major, just what are you going to do next?”

“Bid 1NT?,” she asked, an adorable quaver in her voice.

“Have it your way, cutie,” I replied. “But how are you going to know if I have four or five of my major suit? Or an unbid four-card heart suit? Or, if you must, support for your minor suit?”

She may not have liked “cutie,” either, but I had to make sure she understood what she was asking me to do. It can be a cruel world at masterpoints.

I paused to catch my breath and unclench my hands. “There are choices in life, little lady, and the choice we make here can take us to the dizzying top of the heap or plunge us into a rock bottom board,” I told her. “We’re yoked together on this caper and we’d better get our stories straight.”

That stiffened her spine. Stiffened it a lot. There was steel in her voice now. “Just tell me what you have in your hand already and quit blowing smoke.”

“Huh,” I thought. “Where did this come from?”

“How do you propose I do that, dimple face?”

Wrong thing to say. She drew a long breath, drew it deep and let it out slow. “It’s easy enough even for a blowhard like you to handle,” she replied, dimples gone and eyes flashing danger.

“Just bid the new minor. Do I have to spell it out?”

“When you bid the new minor,” she continued, spelling it out, “you are telling me you have at least 10 points in your sad little hand and either five of the major suit you bid or a four-card heart suit. I’ll bid hearts if I have four of them, support your major suit if I have three of them, rebid my minor suit if I think no trump is as worthless as you are, or put the contract where it probably belonged all along, in no trump.”

I felt like a dealing machine had smacked me in the face. Maybe there was more to this broad than I had thought. “Okay, honey,” I said. “We’ll play it your way.”

She slammed her hand down on the table.

“Don’t call me honey,” she yelled in a voice no one could miss.

The other players in the club sat up straight (at least the ones that were sober enough to sit up straight) and waited for what was to come.

She dropped her voice a little bit, but you could probably still hear her at the Clearwater club. “That’s the way it’s going to be if you want to play with me,” she replied.

“And Estelle,” she said, “you’re my sister. Why are you talking so funny?”