CARP'S RESEARCH UNRAVELS THE FULL EXTENT OF MURPHY'S LAW......

Not so long ago I did a posting on August 10 th on " Why you really lose at bridge ", which laid the majority of blame on Murphy's Law. This stated that " if anything can go wrong it will ". For all those players predestined or fated to be the perennial victims of this law, bridge will continue to heap upon them endless pain and misery. Despite their futile attempts to change tactics, partners, seating positions, venues, systems and conventions, their run of bad luck is destined to continue forever. My research into this phenomenon has proved quite an eye-opener in that there are so many instances of the law at work. Each illustration explains why so many players see themselves as born losers, and life-long victims of this cruel and unforgiving law. The following represent the various ways in which Murphy's Law can inflict untold grief upon its victims :

• No matter how bad their last scores were, far worse are yet to come
• The more they pray for their partners to " stay quiet ", the more likely their partners are to carry on bidding
• When asked to make critical choices or decisions, they will always turn out wrong, even when every other choice on offer looked fraught with danger
• On critical hands their finesses never work
• Moreover, losing finesses in these situations comes in groups of 3. The fourth finesse to fail is in fact the start of the next group of 3
• Should they, or their partners, inadvertantly drop a card (face up) on the table, the opponents are then permitted to determine its eventual play. Inevitably, the card in question is an honour card which is duly sacrificed or wasted, allowing the opponents to make what was an impossible contract
• As soon as they fail to make their contract, they immediately recognise the winning line of play
• Competence has no correlation to years of experience and study. Their journey in bridge has always been on a downward slippery slope.......which for them was like buying a one-way ticket to nowhere
• The more trumps they hold in their hand, the same good fortune applies to one of their opponents. This mocks the law of averages. Should they be blessed with an 6-2 trump fit, one opponent will turn up with the other 5
• Even if the trumps break 4-1, the opponent with the singleton cannot be stopped from making a ruff
• When it really matters, such as defending a slam, loss of memory will occur as to whether or not a particular card has been played . As a result, the victim of Murphy's Law finds himself at trick 12 having to discard say one of two red queens. Forced into making a guess, the choice is certain to be wrong.....thereby allowing the slam to make
• No matter which seats they occupy, the computerised deals always place the opponents' the bigger honour cards over theirs
• The person they hate losing to the most is always the one who inflicts outright bottoms on their scorecards
• If towards the end of a session they have just managed to lift themselves off bottom place, wretched results on the last 3 boards automatically send them back down to where they were
• No matter how badly their opponents bid, they cannot help but end up in the right contract
• No matter how badly their opponents play the cards, the particular distribution and layout of the cards is such that the contract comes rolling in

So, if you have the misfortune of falling victim to Murphy's Law, then live with the fact that your bridge will remain forever in a permanent rut. But there is no need to beat yourself, or blame yourself, for your bad results. Bad luck, it seems, is an enemy, who no one as yet has conquered.