Playing cards on the computer with strangers is a funny thing. You can't see anybody. Nobody can see you. Which means some folks act like their mama raised them in a barn. Here's how to not be one of those folks.

♠ Say hello. When you sit down, type "hi all" or "hey partner." It costs nothing. When you leave, say "thanks, gotta go" and don't leave in the middle of something. "gg" at the end of a game is nice too, even when it wasn't one.

♠ Don't quit in the middle of a hand. I mean it. When you quit mid-hand you leave three people sitting there staring at the screen waiting for somebody to take your seat, and your partner, who did nothing wrong, gets stuck. If your house is on fire, fine, go. If you just got set and you're mad, sit there and take it like a grown woman. Or man.

♠ Don't bid for your partner. Typing "bid high partner" or "I got spades" in the chat before the bidding is cheating, plain and simple. It's called table talk, and at my grandmother's table it would get you put out of the house. Same goes for groaning in the chat when your partner leads something. Your partner can read.

♠ Don't cuss your partner out. Everybody gets set. Everybody misplays a card. If your partner bids a nil and goes down, typing paragraphs about it doesn't put the 100 points back. Say "next hand," and mean it.

♠ Play out the hand. When you've got the rest of the books for sure, it's fine to say so, but let the other team agree before you lay down. Some folks like to see it happen.

♠ Know what the rating means. That number next to somebody's name goes up when they win and down when they lose. That's all it is. It tells you somebody's won more than they've lost. It doesn't tell you they're any fun, and it doesn't mean much at all if they've only played a handful of games. A big rating with a bad attitude is still a bad partner. And watch out for the ones who are so scared of losing points that they'll quit when they're behind. Their rating looks great. Their partners don't.

♠ The Good

RetiredRedPen. My partner. We got sat down together by accident one night in the fall of 1997, two strangers at an open table, and won four games in a row. At the end of the fourth she typed "same time tomorrow?" and we've been playing most weeknights ever since, 9:30 Eastern, give or take her grandkids. She taught English in Detroit for thirty-one years and she still can't help herself: if somebody at the table types "your" when they mean "you're," she corrects them, politely, every time. She bids tight, she counts every card, and she has never once quit on me. I know her kids' names and her late husband's favorite song, and she sent me a card when I got my promotion. I've never seen a picture of her. I don't need one.

Bags4Breakfast. A trucker who plays from a laptop in motel rooms all over the country. Funny as all get out, and he'll take a bag before he'll take a chance, which is how a partner ought to be.

MsMagnolia. One night between hands she told us she was playing from the waiting room at the hospital while her husband was in surgery, because it kept her hands busy. Four strangers kept her company till two in the morning. He came through fine. She sat with us again the next week and we all cheered in capital letters.

♠ The Bad

NilOrNothing. Bid nil eleven hands in a row. Made two of them. Every time he went down, he typed "unlucky." Baby, that's not luck. That's arithmetic.

SevenOrBust. Bid seven on a hand with one ace in it. When I asked why, he said "to make it interesting." It was very interesting. We got set by four.

♠ The Ugly

ThePartnerWhoShallNotBeNamed. All right, I'll tell it. This summer a player sat down across from me, got set on the first hand, called me a word I won't type, and quit. Left me sitting there with his cards. The other team was very kind about it. RetiredRedPen, who was waiting to get on, said it was the worst sentence she'd ever seen, both for what it said and how it was spelled.

The Chatter. Kept typing "hearts are good!!" to his partner before the lead. When the other side called him on it, he said he was "just making conversation." We left. You should too.