The next essential, if you would be thought “charming,” is never to take your partner to task no matter how stupidly he may have “thrown the hand.”

=DON’TS FOR THOSE WHO WOULD BE SOUGHT AFTER=

Don’t hold a “post-mortem” on anybody’s delinquencies (unless you are actually teaching).

If luck is against you, it will avail nothing to sulk or complain about the “awful” cards you are holding.  Your partner is suffering just as much in finding you a “poison vine” as you are in being one—­and you can scarcely expect your opponents to be sympathetic.  You must learn to look perfectly tranquil and cheerful even though you hold nothing but yarboroughs for days on end, and you must on no account try to defend your own bad play—­ever.  When you have made a play of poor judgment, the best thing you can say is, “I’m very sorry, partner,” and let it go at that.

Always pay close attention to the game.  When you are dummy you have certain duties to your partner, and so do not wander around the room until the hand is over.  If you don’t know what your duties are, read the rules until you know them by heart and then—­begin all over again!  It is impossible to play any game without a thorough knowledge of the laws that govern it, and you are at fault in making the attempt.

Don’t be offended if your partner takes you out of a bid, and don’t take him out for the glory of playing the hand.  He is quite as anxious to win the rubber as you are.  It is unbelievable how many people regard their partner as a third opponent.

=MANNERISMS AT THE CARD TABLE=

Mannerisms must be avoided like the plague.  If there is one thing worse than the horrible “post-mortem,” it is the incessant repetition of some jarring habit by one particular player.  The most usual and most offensive is that of snapping down a card as played, or bending a “trick” one has taken into a letter “U,” or picking it up and trotting it up and down on the table.

Other pet offenses are drumming on the table with one’s fingers, making various clicking, whistling, or humming sounds, massaging one’s face, scratching one’s chin with the cards, or waving the card one is going to play aloft in the air in Smart Alec fashion as though shouting, “I know what you are going to lead!  And my card is ready!” All mannerisms that attract attention are in the long run equally unpleasant—­even unendurable to one’s companions.

Many people whose game is otherwise admirable are rarely asked to play because they have allowed some such silly and annoying habit to take its hold upon them.

=THE GOOD LOSER=

The good loser makes it an invariable rule never to play for stakes that it will be inconvenient to lose.  The neglect of this rule has been responsible for more “bad losers” than anything else, and needless to say a bad loser is about as welcome at a card table as rain at a picnic.

Of course there are people who can take losses beyond their means with perfect cheerfulness and composure.  Some few are so imbued with the gambler’s instinct that a heavy turn of luck, in either direction, is the salt of life.  But the average person is equally embarrassed in winning or losing a stake “that matters” and the only answer is to play for one that doesn’t.