Why should we shuffle before returning hands to the board?

Bridge is a thinker’s game, and no thinker delves more deeply into the minds of his fellow players than Sigmund, Professor of Creative Bidding and academic consultant to the Bridge to Nowhere team. You, dear reader, no doubt consider yourself a Master Player, not only because you’ve attended the Holmes Wilson for the last thirty years straight and have managed to scrape together enough 15-15 draws for the required national points, but also because, in all those years, you have acquired a modest amount of fluency in remembering the bidding and play at your own table, at least while the board is still in progress. You still have some way to go, however, before you match the feats of Professor Sigmund, who is capable of reconstructing what happened on a board that has already been played two tables back!

Here’s the scenario. Pairs tournament, of mixed ability. It’s towards the middle of the competition, and Sigmund is doing reasonably well, despite a couple of characteristic slips. His boards are coming from the sitout; he returns to the table after slipping out for a cigar (just a cigar, nothing else), greets his new opponents (“How’s your mother?”), and picks up the following cards.

Board 19
South dealer, E-W vulnerable

♠ KQJT8 ♥ T4 ♦ KQ5 ♣ T42

Would you open this hand, first and green? It depends on your style. If you like going off in game, or letting through a cold 4H, doubled by partner, then by all means reach for the 1S card. If you’re playing Precision or Polish Club or Carrot Club or some other system where openings are limited to 16 HCP, you’re probably reasonably safe; partner’s not going to hang you for opening this aceless rubbish, and at least you’ve bought a favourable lead. But if you play the system you learned at your mother’s knee, some kind of Acol-type Weak & 4, surely pass is clear. Should you declare the hand, you’re at the mercy of your opponents in the early play, since you don’t have any controls: the tempo on this hand belongs to the enemy. Plus you have a very nice spade overcall available on a later round of the auction, which both describes your hand and also has some values to spare. That’s not the case with an Acol 1S opening, which shows 12-20 (yes, twelve to twenty), and compels you to make minimum rebids on the next seven rounds of the auction as parter repeatedly forces the bidding, plenty of time to repent of your folly in opening a hand with too many faces, not enough aces.

That’s how Sigmund saw the hand, and he was about to toss the green Pass card on the table, when a detail suddenly seized his attention. After he had pulled the cards from the board and counted them out 1 to 13, he had inspected their faces, and they were already sorted for him! For sure, the Laws technically require a shuffle before returning the cards to the board; but this is Ireland, the Wild West of contract bridge, where the Laws mean nothing if the sheriff has no gun, and it is routine here for players to cock a snook at the authorities by returning cards unshuffled. Why were these cards in perfect order, spades-hearts-diamonds-clubs, sorted top to bottom? Because that was how the previous South had sorted them before he returned them to the board! And had he really played all 13 cards in this highly improbably order of highest-to-lowest, spades-to-clubs? Surely not. No doubt the hand was passed out, because the points were distributed evenly as 9 or 10 or 11 between the four hands, all of which were fairly flat; and that meant that Sigmund, who held a very appealing holding in the boss suit, could bid 2S, notionally weak (Benjamin style), confident that no-one had the values to come in at the 3 level, and confident of finding at least a partially-fitting dummy with plenty of working values, but not enough to make missing game a danger!

As expected, 2S was passed out, with no-one having the values to proceed further. The full hand was as follows, with 2S cold against a passout at most other tables: +110 and a near top.

Dealer S Vul E/W Scoring MP Lead ♣9	♠ 94 ♥ 862 ♦ AJT62 ♣ KQ7
♠ A32 ♥ AQ753 ♦ 93 ♣ 985		♠ 765 ♥ KJ9 ♦ 874 ♣ AJ63
	♠ KQJT8 ♥ T4 ♦ KQ5 ♣ T42

(9 of clubs led, followed by three rounds of hearts, on the last of which the Professor discarded a spade from hand, playing safe against a possible 4-2 spade split, followed by ace-other spade exit.)

Undeserved reward for the actions of a psycho? Analytical brilliance? Your judgement, dear reader, but if you begrudge Sigmund his fine score on this board, there is one favour you could do us all: Please, please, please, shuffle your cards before you return them to the wallet!