Read about Master Point Press author, Ratty

As I was getting ready to start my very last day of Internet crawling  I found this rather fun page on my friend and Master Point Press author, Mark Horton.  Here is an excerpt.

http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/bridge/biographies/markhorton.html

The MSO’s Gossip Columnist

Mark Horton

(b1950)

Editor of Bridge Magazine since 1995. Works free-lance on all aspects of bridge.

Main Hobbies: Reading, cooking, theatre, old movies, wine, chess (he was twice British Speed Champion) & watching sport.

Attributes: Can always raise a smile, even in adversity, and has a fantastic sense of humour. Hair now vanished. Tall, and still reasonably slim!

Editor’s Note: Many people wonder how the nickname “Ratty” came about. Well, naming no names, many years ago Mark had a girlfriend who called him “Marky-Mouse“. When they eventually parted company, the lady was none too pleased, and started to refer to him as “Marky-Rat“. Sadly for Mark, this stuck, gradually becoming shorted to Ratty or (particularly by your Editor) to Ratty-Darling. We would like to make it quite clear that this nickname actually has no foundation in truth!

However, people meeting Ratty for the first time do need some forewarning, because he was born without a volume control and is, without doubt, one of the noisiest people we know!

I also found an article mark had written about being a good partner with some good advice. 

http://www.greatbridgelinks.com/gblCLASS/Partner.html

A few highlights:

Coping with disaster: The best way to cope with the inevitable disasters is to laugh them off. This tends to disconcert even the best opponents who are used to seeing their opponents argue.

Who’s the boss? In most partnerships, one player tends to be regarded as the boss. If you are the stronger player, go out of your way to make life easy for your partner.