Free The Cardturner by Louis Sachar

barley soup that was incredible. With just a hint of mint."

    The game got under way, and Toni screwed up on the very first hand. Toni passed, East opened "One heart," and Trapp said, "Double."
    I set the red card with the big X on the table.
    I had seen Trapp make that bid before. It didn't mean he expected to beat one heart.
    This was his hand:

    His bid is called a takeout double. He was telling Toni that he had a good hand, and the three other suits. He didn't know which suit to bid, so he was leaving it up to her.
    His bid basically said, "Bid something. Anything! Bid your longest suit!"
    But what did Toni do? She passed.

    The final contract was one heart doubled. If this had been the week before, she probably would have lucked out and gotten a top board. But this week her luck had run out. If anything, her mistakes were magnified. The declarer made two overtricks for a score of 560 points.
Toni screwed up big-time!
    "My fault," Trapp said when the hand was over. "I haven't taught you about takeout doubles."
    She should have known anyway, I thought. I did .
    As the game progressed, Toni continued to make mistakes. I almost felt sorry for her as she and Trapp got one bad result after another.
    Almost.
    They finished with a 41 percent game. Afterward he had me get boards six, ten, and twenty, and went over the hands with her.
    "Take a look at your hand on board twenty," he said.
    Toni removed her cards from the North slot and spread them on the table. "Yuck!" she said.
    There was not a single face card in her hand.
    "You had a very rare hand," said Trapp. "It's known as a Yarborough, a hand with no card higher than a nine."
    I looked again at the spread of cards. There wasn't even a ten.
    Trapp said that before bridge was invented, there was a game called whist played in England. "They played for money, not masterpoints, and people were always complaining about being dealt lousy cards. If somebody won, well, that was because of his superior skill. If he lost, it was bad luck. Hah!"
    Trapp went on to explain that the Earl of Yarborough got so sick and tired of all the griping that he offered a kind of insurance. He gave thousand-to-one odds. A whist player would give the Earl of Yarborough one British pound, and if that player was dealt a hand with no card higher than a nine, the earl would pay him one thousand pounds.
    "Did he ever have to pay off?" I asked.
    My question startled him. He had been telling all this to Toni and I think he'd forgotten I was even there.
    "Not very often," he said. "The Earl of Yarborough made a lot of money."
    "Yarborough," said Toni. "That was the name of your company, wasn't it?"
    "Yarborough Investment Group," said Trapp. "We were able to find value in things that other people thought were worthless. And that, Toni, is how you should have approached your hand. When you pick up a hand that seems worthless, you should think: This is a rare hand. A Yarborough! One in a thousand . You should ask yourself, Where is the hidden value? After all, even Alton would be able to win a trick with an ace or a king. It takes great focus and concentration to win a trick with a six."
    He went on to explain how, if she had discarded diamonds and saved her clubs, she could have won the last trick with the six of clubs.

27
A Phone Call
    The second I walked in the door, my mother practically shouted in my face. "Toni Castaneda called! She wants you to call her back. I wrote down the number."
    "Okay," I said as I walked past her, then started down the hall.
    "Wait, where are you going?"
    "To take a leak, if you don't mind. It was a long drive home."
    "I mind your attitude."
    In the bathroom, I splashed my face with cold water and stared at my reflection.
    It's never been easy for me to just call up a girl on the phone. I had to psych myself up first.
    You would think it would have been easy in this case, since I hated Toni, and since I was just calling her back.
    You would think.
    My mother was waiting for me as