Comment by hotnfresh

Bridge tournament rules are crafted as if everyone involved wishes they were playing a different game, but are for some reason stuck with the basic rules of Bridge. There’s a pile of rules about how you aren’t allowed to do all kinds of things that the basic rules would enable.

It’s like if baseball couldn’t change field size or mound height or whatever and just had to add lots of rules about how you aren’t allowed to throw too fast or hit too far et c., but kept the physical reality of the game the same.