Ask Auntie Faye: Is Table Talk Cheating or Culture?

Ask Auntie Faye: table law from the kitchen table in Charlotte. Rulings are final. Explanations are free.

The dispute

Your partner looks at her hand and says, “Mm. I’m feeling good tonight.” The other side says that’s coaching. She says it’s conversation. Everybody at the table has an opinion about what “feeling good” means. Is table talk cheating or culture?

Faye’s ruling

Both. And I’ll tell you which is which.

Talk about yourself, your partner’s shoes, the last hand, the plate in front of you, the fact that your opponent hasn’t won since Easter: that is culture, and if you can’t take it, there’s a quieter game down the street.

Talk about the cards in your hand, in any language, in any code, with any look: that is cheating. “I’m feeling good” before a bid is a bid. “Go ahead, I got you” is a bid. Tapping the table twice is a bid. If your partner knows something about your hand that the other side doesn’t, and they didn’t learn it from a card you played, you told them.

First time, the hand plays out and the warning is public, so everybody at the table heard it. Second time, the hand belongs to the other side. I don’t care how good the cards were.

Why

Trash talk is how this game was passed down. Nobody learned Bid Whist in silence; they learned it getting talked about. Coaching is different, because it takes the one thing the game is built on, which is that your partner has to read you from what you play. A partnership that talks across the table isn’t a partnership. It’s two people holding one hand.

The line is easy to find. Would you say it with the other side’s grandmother standing behind you? Then say it. Would you need her to leave the room first? Then you already know.

In the app

The chat is for talking, and the computer players don’t listen anyway. Your partner reads you the way it’s supposed to be done: by what you lead.

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