It’s so much easier to play bridge well when luck is on your side. You’ve just doubled your opponents and collected a huge penalty, or made a grand slam on a finesse — and suddenly you start playing like Helgemo, with sharpened wits and perfect judgment. Luck breeds luck, and you don’t have to be
Goodbye 2020 and don’t come back. Worst part for bridge players? All the matches and tournaments have been moved online, which is not ideal as it is too easy to cheat. But for me the worst thing about it is the absence of that indefinable thing called table presence, easily the best part of my
It’s surprising how quickly we adapt to things: nine months ago, most of us had never played bridge online before, yet it feels almost normal now. One slightly surreal side-effect is the way an older generation of players have begun using text-acronyms with the gusto of teenagers: TY, SY, NP and, if anything remotely funny
Many years ago I remember Tor Helness, the great Norwegian champion, going into the semi-final of a world championship saying: ‘Whatever happens I am not going to make a mistake.’ They won (the final too, actually) and I asked him if he had succeeded in playing perfectly. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Nobody plays perfectly and I
Each November, Paula Leslie organises the Young Chelsea Women’s Teams — a fantastic event, attracting many of Europe’s best players to London. It was a shame it had to be held online this year — but I must say there was something rather magical about competing on ‘Realbridge’ with video streaming and sound. How extraordinary
The rubber bridge world has lost one of its best and most flamboyant players; David Herman was an emaciated, elegant American lawyer who made TGRs his second home. If David wasn’t in the club, you knew he was either travelling or sick. I last saw him the day before lockdown in March. He got into
It’s been a busy week of bridge. First came the Lady Milne, the women’s home internationals. As the host nation, England had two teams; my partner Qian Li and I qualified for the second. I’ve played in the Lady Milne quite a few times before, and it felt strange and slightly unreal to be doing
How many times have we had it hammered into us: ‘When dummy goes down, plan the play’? Well, if we are playing with Nick Sandqvist, probably every time we pick up a hand and then again when we floor a frigid game. These days Nick plays mainly with Natalie Shashou, a very talented relative newcomer
I know its only October, but I’ve already found the perfect Christmas present for bridge-lovers: Simon Cochemé’s new book, Bridge With a Twist. It’s full of quirky observations, funny anecdotes, snippets of history and flights of fancy. There are jokes, some old (‘My bridge partner ran off with my wife, and let me tell you,
When (if) the world returns to normal and live bridge tournaments resume, there are two things I will miss after all these months of virtual everything: playing in my onesie and the UNDO button. The UNDO button does what it says on the packet. If you ‘misclick’ you press it and you can correct your
‘I have a wonderful hand to show you,’ Gunnar Hallberg exclaimed when I saw him last week. Gunnar is a world-class professional, now in his early seventies, whose passion for bridge remains undimmed. Since lockdown, there’s scarcely a high-level online tournament he hasn’t competed in, so naturally I assumed the hand came from one of
One of the things that makes bridge so endlessly fascinating is that it is forever changing and growing. At high levels, bidding theory evolves all the time. Slam bidding has become much more accurate, conventions such as Gazzilli are used by many and transfers after a 1♣ opening are almost standard. Most good players know
The Alt Invitational is a prestigious online teams tournament held every fortnight or so, packed with world-class players. It’s not easy to secure a place, but my friend Jonathan Harris managed it for the first time last week. Things didn’t start well for his 11-strong team, and by Thursday morning, after four days of play,
When I first learnt bridge, my teacher (not known as bossy boots for nothing) would thump the table when dummy came down and boom: ‘What is your plan?’. I could hardly say I didn’t know I needed one. When I understood what he meant, things became a little clearer, until he introduced ‘Plan B’, reassessing
My friend Ollie Burgess has just made the bold move of quitting his job in Manchester, and moving to London to manage the Young Chelsea Bridge Club. Ollie is a fantastic player, as well as being popular and dynamic — exactly what’s needed. The YC is much loved by its members, but its numbers have
The bridge world has lost some glittering stars this (ghastly) year, the latest being France’s Catherine d’Ovidio — multiple world and European champion. She described herself in a recent interview as a ‘difficult partner, lovely teammate’. I prefer Tony Forrester’s comment on Bridgewinners: ‘She was adorable and a really outstanding card player.’ Today’s deal is
A major pandemic has been sweeping through the bridge world since the game went online — and it’s called cheating. Who would have thought so many people would succumb to temptation, and what does it say about human nature? ‘Self-kibbitzing’ — that weirdly euphemistic term which means logging on under a different name to see
I have not played a single hand of bridge for about a month, neither have I kibitzed online. Ergo I have no bridge stories to tell and no players to tell them about. However, I have been reading a bit and one of my favourite bridge books is Geir Helgemo’s Bridge With Imagination. In most
There are some experts — like my friend Sally Brock — who think Blackwood is an overrated convention, and that slams can be bid just as well without wheeling out 4NT to ask for aces. That’s often true. At the Portland Club, Blackwood isn’t even allowed, and players don’t seem to have much trouble bidding
I am frankly repulsed by the latest cheats, exposed after the online invitational Alt and OCBL tournaments. When F2F bridge became impossible, a few innovative bridge organisers came up with a sensational alternative that enabled world-class players to compete against each other online and the rest of the (bridge) world to watch and learn from
