REBECCA ROOD'S MAILBAG.........................................................................

• Dear Rebecca, For several years now I have been playing bridge with my husband , John.....and never on any occasion have we ever scored above 50%. He has of course had other regular partners in the past, but many of these have taken your own lives. The last one, the police found his abandoned car but not his body. However, inside the car there was some semblance of a suicide note note hurriedly written on the back of his most recent scorecard ( John was his partner, of course) .....which enquiries later revealed was a 28% session !! Infact, over the years club membership has fallen dramatically with so many of John's former- partners all choosing to uproot sticks and move abroad.
• As much as I love him, as a bridge partner there is no one worse. He has developed the art of playing poor bridge to perfection. Yet his passion for the game remains unabated. He spends all his time away from the club, reading countless bridge books on how to do the most complex and difficult declarer plays imaginable..... but in the process completely loses touch with the basics of the game. He once found himself in a rigid grand slam with 13 tricks on top. Yet he was hell-bent on engineering his latest discovery, the three-suit strip squeeze. This he actually achieved after conceding a trick to his opponents first in order to rectify the count. Not only that, it seems that every cold contract always had hidden dangers, which his expert analysis is able to detect. Again, there was one instance he assumed the outstanding trumps were breaking 5-0, with his RHO holding all five. Gasps of amazement echoed around the room when on the first round of trumps he led his 2 of hearts from dummy up to his AKQ95, only to cover his RHO's 4 with the 5 !! His LHO with his doubleton 7-2 took a minute or two to realize he had actually won the trick !!
• So Im asking you dear Rebecca for a simple piece of advice...... Is it John who needs help....or is it me? Yours don't know what to do for the best, Sheila Downing
• Dear Sheila, That letter of yours was a harrowing read. You should definitely put yourself forward for the EBU's "Most Long Suffering Partner Award". You already have my vote. As for your husband, he seems beyond help, destined to remain a prat for the rest of his bridge days. You ,on the other hand, need to follow the lead of all his former-partners and move away for good. Your sanity and salvation requires you to follow the steps of every sane women, who like you ended up marrying complete duffer, but decided to do something about it . There is nothing wrong about divorcing someone, who has already separated himself from you. His separation from reality makes him completely unaware.....not only of his gross limitations as a bridge playing partner ...but also of his gross adequacies as a husband. Yours giving it to you straight, Rebecca