In polite cards circles, an opposition partner may pull out a revolver and shoot you.
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It’s not the cards you’re dealt but how you play the hand that matters. Wise words from a person who’s obviously never played 500 with a rookie.
Least that’s what I reckon my mate kept telling himself after getting me as his partner during a recent beach holiday featuring nightly jousts over the card table.
Probably explained why he drank so much too.
Truth was, I’d never played 500 much. Fish was more my go. But the guys we stayed with enthusiastically recruited me and the other half into the dark arts, primarily, I believe, so they could take the mickey.
Cards give such an insight into the mind. And it’s scary what people see.
Your 500 partner may hope they’re getting a trooper with a mind like a steel trap. Instead they get a vacant lot complete with tumbleweeds, as evidenced by that call to go full misère with a hand stacked aces high.
There’s no ‘‘I’’ in team, but there’s two in ‘‘gin and tonic’’ – which probably explained some of the more devil-may-care manoeuvres.
To mistake them for selfish play would assume you had some idea what you were doing, which was certainly not the case in the early games.
500 is a blood sport requiring teamwork, so it definitely helps if you and your partner are on the same page of the same book: preferably a book with big letters and lots of pictures.
Alas, as Madonna so eloquently observed, virgins play cards as if touched for the very first time – by the sun – during early hands.
At least in 500, unlike say poker, you’ve got a partner to blame for your mistakes. And though it’s not fair to blame others for your mistakes, one quickly learns cards are right up there with love and war in terms of who gives a flying ^&%&%^ what’s fair.
Bragging rights are all that matter, so you play to win.
The one compensation rookies offer seasoned players is that rookies inevitably make dumb calls. Dumb calls that can see them branded for the rest of the holiday as things like ‘‘moron’’, ‘‘jackass’’ or ‘‘Uncle Jeb’’, who legendarily played the most moronically jackass hand in the history of holiday 500.
Seasoned players love a good sledge. One that keeps giving preferably. So for instance, next morning the call might go out ‘‘we need bread, think you can handle that ... Jeb?’’ That will go on for the rest of the holiday. Possibly your life.
Hence, for the rookie, it’s important to build resilience – cue the G&T. A move not totally endorsed by Hoyles.
But the reality is a rookie’s gonna make dumb calls sober or loaded, so ... I’ll have a margarita if there’s one going.
Words probably fail to describe adequately the machinations of the rookie mentality, so step inside the mind’s eye during a typical hand.
The rookie’s partner calls six spades. The rookie will have little idea what this means in terms of the game. He’ll know his partner is trying to tell him something. Possibly about spades. That he has six. Yessssss.
But that’s about it as far as it will go despite his partner looking at the rookie in a knowing manner.
Like he knows the rookie is a Cletus.
Then the opposition might go six hearts.
With any luck, the rookie will realise that’s a different colour. Which means something. Something reddddd.
But again, he’ll hit a roadblock.
This is where the rookie will learn table talk is frowned upon. You just can’t ask if it’s important if you’ve got two jacks and the joker.
In polite cards circles, an opposition partner may well pull out a revolver and shoot you. Better to shut your mouth and let the cards do the talking.
That mightn’t seem like much of a conversation to your partner, but as mentioned at the start, in cards as in life, you deal with the hand you’re dealt.