By Susie Leo, I/N Coordinator

I was recently in a class taught by McKenzie Myers, and he began the lesson with a question: What is the most important thing in bridge?

Hmmm … we all started sorting through our bridge brains to come up with a brilliant answer. Defense? Bidding? Partnership agreements? Remembering Drury? On and on. After watching our furrowed brows, Mac gave us the answer.

BE KIND TO YOUR PARTNER. They are the only person in the room (besides the director) who is on your side.

Mac went on to share more bridge wisdom about this topic.

            The more you trust your partner, the better your partner will be.

            If partner bids something that you think came from another planet, instead of blaming them for a mistake, see if anything you did contributed to their strange bid.

            When dummy comes down and you see a scary mess of nothing, the only words out of your mouth are, “Thank you, partner.”

            Don’t “should” on your partner or yourself. The words “You should have …” should never come out of your mouth. (See the irony in this advice?)

Does that mean that you overlook miscommunication? Absolutely not! Instead of hashing things out at the table, ask Pard if you can meet to discuss your convention card and agreements. That is the time and place to discover where you and Pard are not aligned. Then you can make a new agreement.

Kindness rules. Happy bridge playing to you all!

Susie