m1cha, on 2017-February-14, 21:11, said:
If it's your regular partner you will know what you can say and what not. If it's a random pickup, well, you might try something carefully and see where it get's you.
Agree. I did mention that both these were random pickups.
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But actually, there may be a number of reasons for not saying anything, such as:
- he realized his mistake and your comment would not be news to him;
- he's a bad player and he knows it and he has given up trying to improve, so your comment would not be helpful;
- he's a better player than you who had good reasons for a play that just wasn't successful;
- he's a sensitive guy who doesn't like to get critisized;
- he's just killing some time and not interested in a discussion that may get stressful or lengthy;
- he IS interested in your comment but he doesn't AGREE. Your discussion gets lengthy and you are boring your opponents;
etc.
One of the partners had actually marked themself as 'novice' on their card. That's good, in my eyes. It suggests they are here to improve their game. So I like to feel that a gentle hint on the lines of
"you would have been better to play ....." would - far from being amiss - actually be constructive. But I am loath to do even that - risk of a flare-up.
If I myself drop an almighty clanger (and it happens often enough) - and I realise it immediately - I always apologise to partner. That breaks the ice straight away - partner can then freely 'explain' to me without fear of reprisal.
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If you really cannot stand what someone is doing, I feel "gtg bye" is a sensible solution.
That's exactly what I did.
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Here's a little story for you. After some years in BBO, I've got 2 people on my enemy list. I forgot how one of them got there but here's it for the other one. I was playing in an individual tournament in some standard contract. It turned out to be complicated with many occasions to make decisions. I found I was playing reasonably, though I don't insist I was always playing according to probability. Anyway, all my choices turned out wrong for the given distribution of cards, and I ended up with a number of undertricks. After the tournament (!) I got a message from my then-partner saying he had "never seen such pathetic play in his whole life". This was the first message I ever got from anyone in BBO. Well, I felt I couldn't leave it there and wondered how to respond for quite a while. Then I had this idea of checking his tournament result and found out he had ended up at 35 % while I had still made it to 55 %. It was clear immediately that any response whatsoever from my side would be a waste of effort. But I put him on that list in order to save him from the trouble of having to play with me again.
I think you were quite right to do so. Direct insults are totally out of order. Sadly they seem to happen a lot of the time.
OK, I'll go into just a little bit of detail, regarding the 'novice' pick-up partner. We were in a 3NT contract which was rock-solid after the opening lead: eight tricks on top outside of spades, I held
♠xx, partner as declarer held
♠Kx. Nine tricks. Lead was a low spade to West's J, and partner
ducked. Perhaps partner was confused for a moment and thought they held Ax, in which case it would have been OK to duck. Perhaps it was a mis-click. Perhaps not. Either way, perhaps I should have said something, but I ducked out.