ALERT!

Cryptology

Bridge players are required to have available for the opponents inspection what is called a “convention card.” On it are all the partnership’s agreements concerning bids that are outside the realm of everyday bridge. Most people have FAR too many listed and are lucky if they can remember them when they occur. As an aid for those folks, like myself, who are unable to remember as well as we used to, I created a modified card with much fewer conventions:

The HDT Convention Card (convention overload relief), named in honor of Henry David Thoreau, who espoused the succinct philosophy “Simplify”

What on earth prompted me to sit down and revamp my convention card and discard many that have long been near and dear to me? I was adding more and more conventions to my bridge card and remembering fewer and fewer. Have you looked at your “convention” cards lately? What a mess!

Once upon a time…bidding at bridge was relatively simple. Bidding a suit meant you had that suit, no trump was used to show balanced hands and doubles were for penalty. How many different uses for the double can you name today?
“Theorists” are constantly running new conventions up the flagpole, hoping we will salute, thereby bestowing upon them bridge immortality, since most conventions are named for their (real or presumed) inventor.

The HDT card may be used as a guide by the bridge-convention challenged. This is not for novices. It is not intended for the young and adventurous, who may have extra space left in their brain for little-used information. Rather it is a distillation of the plethora of conventions that those of us with shrinking gray matter may actually use from time to time.

Simplify.