Talking Bridge .....

Why not re-deal?

Pass, pass, pass, pass. First hand of the evening. Borrrinngg! So why not re-deal it? Well firstly, perhaps because the EBU says not to (in no uncertain terms, I might add). In my experience they’ve usually got a pretty good reason for their dicta, but perhaps you need to be convinced. Well, here’s why I agree with them.

1. Are you always going to re-deal it, or just when all four players agree?

(a) Always re-deal

What if someone’s passed with a 15-count having ‘lost’ an Ace? Is he to escape with a re-deal? Or perhaps you can see that your opponents have missed an easy Spade part-score. Are you going to be happy to let them re-deal? Most wouldn’t be!

(b) Just re-deal when it’s agreed

Two beginners are playing two experienced players. The experienced pair can see that this is going to be a bad board for them. Isn’t there a danger that the beginners will get railroaded into agreeing to a re-deal? Even if the better pair can see that it’s going to be flat they will no doubt prefer to take their chances of improving on an average with another hand.

2. Recently, a round 1 pass-out contained four balanced ten-counts and it was not re-dealt. At the other 11 tables it was only thrown in 5 more times. One player who’d got a minus on the board complained to me that he’d been misled into opening in third position, reasoning that there had to be opening values in the fourth hand since otherwise (he assumed) the board would have been re-dealt. "Why didn’t I tell people to re-deal such hands", he asked. Needless to say, I had little sympathy for him! The incident did, however, highlight another reason for not re-dealing: that being that if you do, you’re altering the odds on all the remaining hands. My complainant tried to take advantage of this and only came unstuck (serve him right!) because the players where the board was dealt had the sense to leave it as it was.

3. I know a lot of people ( I’m one of them) who like to play mini no-trump (10-12, and I do it at all vulnerabilities!). Now you may think I’m a lunatic and you may well be right, but I want to find out whether my methods are successful on this sort of hand. What right have you got to re-deal it before I get the chance?

4. The first round of the evening invariably takes 5-10 minutes longer than all the others. This is partially due to the dealing process. What makes you think that you’ve got time to re-deal boards?

5. One last point. As far as I’m aware, boards never get re-dealt at any of my usual clubs (they’re certainly not if I’m watching, anyway). So you might think that I would encounter a higher-than-average incidence of travellers with a string of zeros. Not so. Even majority pass-outs are a rarity. If you imagine that just because you’ve just passed it out, then so will everyone else, then you’re kidding yourself. There’s always someone who’ll open anything!

Just think - if we all played mini no-trump it’d never happen anyway. How about it folks?

Email us with your opinion: brambledown@blueyonder.co.uk