justice, injustice, and bridge
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(from my amazon.com review)
This is indeed a sad tale: it reminds one of justice in a third-world country. Rather than the familiar model of blind justice with a sword and a set of scales, we have a model with both eyes open, a noose in one hand, and the other clinging to a pal she's drunkenly leaning against. Third world justice (and too much US justice) depends on who you know: right and wrong are irrelevant. Much of Lone Wolff is devoted to what might be loosely termed "irregularities", which covers the gamut from questionable ethical play, information gained through pauses, unholy arrangements to fiddle with scores, to downright deliberate cheating. This, for me, is the most interesting part: it brings me back to when I first read Truscott's startling "The Great Bridge Scandal". Other parts of the book deal autobiographically with Wolff's life, how he became a bridge player, etc--things that are not very different from what you might find in many autobiographical bridge works.
Much of the book ties in to what people believe and want to believe. I had a student who was a tournament bridge player: he was positive that the accusations against Reese and Shapiro had to be false. I loaned him Truscott's book, with its diagrams and photos: it was quite a disillusionment for him. Lone Wolff describes a plethora of similar cases. There are the teams who when they play each other agree beforehand to record, say, a 16-14 victory as 30-0, whoever wins. There are players who deliberately pause for effect when they have decent hands and then pass. There's one grotesque deal described where south opens, west pauses, hems and haws, so to speak with a good hand, north passes, and east, who has 6 points (2 queens, 2 jacks) overcalls 2 clubs on a 5-card suit to the queen. south passes, as does west, who has 13 points. An easy bid for east if you know your partner has a decent hand, and the final contract was 2 clubs. South appealed, and was slapped with an AWMW (appeal without merit warning)--for a frivolous appeal. But there's worse--much worse! Imagine a baseball game where, with the bases loaded in the 9th the batter strikes out on a 3-2 count. Or it certainly looks as if he swung and missed. The batter tells the umpire "That pitch was outside--I didn't mean to swing at it". The umpire agrees, and the swing-and-miss becomes ball 4 instead. Absurd? Assuredly. But perhaps only in baseball, not in tournament bridge. Wolff describes a cold 6 club contract by south (he was west). Declarer called for a low spade to be led from dummy, and went down. Some time after the deal was finished declarer called the director and said that what she intended to say was a low club from dummy (which would have made the contract). She won the appeal, and so the tournament result was changed from down 1 to 6 clubs bid and made.
There are too many caes like the above--too often decisions are based on who you are and who you know. Wolff describes situations where he had to rule against friends--some respected him for it, but others did not: they expected favorable rulings, not justice. So this is a good and interesting book, but a sad one. It's like reading about crooked NBA refs who throw games: you love the game, but hate the politics and deception.
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