I’m just back from Beijing, where I’ve been playing in the Hua Yuan Cup, an invitational tournament for the eight top-ranked women’s teams in the world. It’s a wonderful event, with generous prize money, and I got lucky: a member of the England team, Gillian Fawcett, couldn’t come, so I subbed. To say it
After all the excitement of England making the playoffs in all four events at the World Championships in China, only the Seniors reached the final. They played against Denmark and lost but came home silver medallists. Congratulations to David Kenrick and Trevor Ward, John Holland and Alan Mould and David Muller and Malcolm Pryor. Well
The world bridge championships are finally over — and I don’t remember another where the England players gave us such an exhilarating two weeks. All four teams — Open, Women’s, Seniors and Mixed — performed superbly. Particular congratulations to the Seniors, who won silver, and the Women, who won bronze. But perhaps the biggest
The World Championships, held in Wuhan, China, came to the end of a gruelling eight days of qualification (eight teams out of 24 go through to the knockout stage) and England made it in all four events: Open, Seniors, Women and Mixed. The Open team was not clear until the very last match when a
The bridge world championships are underway in Wuhan in China, and I’m obsessively following the action online. Fortunately it’s taking place in a different time zone, which means play is over by midday UK time, and I can emerge from my bunker. What makes it even more compelling is knowing all the England players —
Not many male bridge players over a certain age (ten) would call themselves feminists. I won’t repeat what the partner of one female European gold medallist said of her (and all women bridge players) at the table, but it wasn’t pretty. At a recent mixed pairs tournament a married couple — let’s call them
Benjaminised Acol, better known as ‘Benji Acol’ — and its variant ‘Reverse Benji’ — is one of the most commonly played bidding systems in Britain. So popular, indeed, that it’s easy to forget that ‘Benji’ was a real person — the Scottish international Albert Benjamin, who died nearly 15 years ago at the age of
When did ‘literally’ become, literally, the most annoying word in the English language? Fairly recently I would guess, because ‘like’ as in ‘I was like… seriously?’ or ‘that’s like, so unfair’ was easily winning the title for many years. ‘Like’ has become a filler, taking the place of um and er, and generally making the
Terence Reese’s concentration at the bridge table was legendary. Most people know the story of how Boris Schapiro once wagered £50 that Reese wouldn’t notice if a naked woman entered the room and walked around while he was playing. Somehow, he found a willing woman — and won his bet. I’d always assumed the
‘Table presence’ is a funny old expression. It sounds as though it refers to a player’s magnetic appeal or domineering personality. But no, it’s more like an extraordinary presence of mind. And it’s about the highest compliment you can pay someone. The Official Encyclopaedia of Bridge has made a valiant attempt to define the term,
TGR’s Bridge Club in Paddington is the daily home to those of us who want to play bridge but cannot always adhere to the times of local duplicates. There is a game every afternoon and from time to time there is also an evening Goulash game; any contract at the one level (or passed out)
Bridge isn’t a game you can get good at quickly. It takes years to reach a reasonable standard — far longer if you don’t practice continually. Of course, some people get there quicker than others. Claire Robinson is one of them. I first met Claire about four years ago; she’d only been playing for two
I have always thought the term ‘bridge holiday’ was an oxymoron. When I travel with my team to various events, we play highly competitively for about eight hours every day — a holiday it ain’t. Concentrating all the time is exhausting and (for me) impossible. Then there is the inevitable insomnia and the resulting ridiculous
All high-level bridge tournaments involve playing with screens placed diagonally across the table — and there are numerous rules to remember. For instance, only North or South may slide the bidding tray under the screen, only declarer or dummy may remove the tray after the bidding, only declarer or dummy may lift the screen’s flap…
I know I’m not the strongest declarer in the world (or even at the table) but I didn’t realise my partner(s) literally stop breathing when they put dummy down. Unusually, I was declarer on quite a few hands in the recent European Mixed Teams, and I started to get an uneasy feeling when I heard
I’m just back from an exhilarating week in Istanbul, where I was lucky enough to be partnering Tom Paske in the mixed teams and pairs of the European Open Championships. My plan was to stay on an extra day to sightsee, but as I was wandering into breakfast, my friend Debbie Sandford rushed up, ashen-faced.
Here we go again. The ninth European Bridge Championships are upon us, this time taking place in Istanbul. Hundreds of Europe’s bridge elite (and many from further afield) descended for some or all of the tournaments, even though it is usually torture. Four years ago in Tromso there was the Portaloo scandal (don’t ask) and
Bridge is such a complex, multi-layered game that a single hand can be approached in myriad ways, depending on the skill of the player. In fact, peering into the mind of a world-class player is a bit like entering another dimension; there are possibilities you didn’t even know existed. At a recent pairs tournament,
Stefan Skorchev, young Bulgarian international, has given us another top tier annual pairs tournament to put in our diaries — the Acol Invitational Pairs. Superbly organised and offering big prize money, this year it was won by Thor Erik Hoftaniska and Gunnar Hallberg, a Norwegian/Swedish partnership that was invented at the rubber bridge table the
I’ve recently been reading Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca to my children, and while it’s every bit as enjoyable as I remember, I’ve been bristling with embarrassment at the unflattering references to bridge in the first few chapters. The narrator is a paid companion to the grotesquely snobby Mrs van Hopper, who, we are told
