Just take the money! That’s the philosophy of many rubber bridge players when it comes to bidding — or rather not bidding — grand slams. Why risk going down in seven when a small slam will net you a large enough gain? I’m not of that school myself: so long as I trust my partner,
Many top-class bridge players enjoy flirting with poker, making it their bit on the side. I can certainly see the attraction. No partner shaking their head. No misunderstandings in the bidding. And no teammates rolling their eyes when you bring back a lousy result. We all know that bluffing is an essential part of poker
The Hubert Phillips Bowl is one of my favourite tournaments of the year: a friendly, knockout event with a rather quaint rule that all teams must include at least one woman. For some reason, this normally leads to teams of men plus exactly one woman — as though the woman represents a handicap. So, in
If you live in (or anywhere near) London, and you enjoy a good teams tournament, you could do no better than joining one of the excellent SuperLeague games at Young Chelsea or TGRs. There are two divisions in each, played on alternate weeks and two teams get promoted from Div 2 and two go down
Sometimes Janet teases me that this should be called the David Gold Column, as I mention his name so frequently. It’s true — David is a good friend as well as my bridge mentor, so he often points out interesting hands for me to write about. But it’s also true that over the past few
It’s the beginning of May and I have a feeling I am about to write the same opening sentence as I have for the past eight years: the Schapiro Spring Foursomes is undoubtedly the best teams tournament in England. Held in Stratford, it’s a double knockout format and this year it was won by Alexander
I’ve been practising bidding online with my friend Guy Hart in preparation for the Spring Fours in Stratford (we’ll know our fate by the time you read this). We’ve not played together much before, and frankly the field is so strong — a roll-call of the greats — that our team has about a zero
The day before the London Marathon, Young Chelsea BC held its spring half-marathon. Eighty-seven boards were played over 12 hours (it used to be a full 24 hours), the scoring was IMPs and 30 pairs took part. It was won by Colin Simpson and David Kendrick, two extremely good players with donkey’s years experience behind
Bridge is such an unforgiving game; you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball for a single moment. Take, for example, the penalty for revoking. There you are, concentrating fiercely, counting the cards — and suddenly you realise you’ve done something as idiotic as fail to follow suit. You try to correct your
Can there be a game more humiliating than Bridge? Last weekend the boys and I went to Warsaw to play the marvellous Palace Cup. I was bursting with excitement as I was playing with my number one Bridge God Geir Helgemo. Lest anyone should think that Helgy woke up one morning and said, ‘I know
Well done to Janet and her team for their victory at the London Easter Congress. My own team — David Gold, Peter Taylor and Ingar Hansen — were lying first equal at one point, but ended up slipping to tenth after Janet and her crew beat us in our head-to-head match. I seem to have
Tom Townsend, my esteemed teammate and the Telegraph’s bridge correspondent, did the double last weekend at the London Easter Festival of Bridge. First he won the Championship Pairs playing with Mark Teltscher and then he won the teams playing with … me! Well — on my team anyway. Tom and Mark have had considerable success
Bridge players are a superstitious bunch. And I don’t just mean the steps they take to prepare for matches — the lucky socks, the special pens, the insistence on sitting North or South. No, even once the game has begun, many rely on strange sayings and beliefs to help them decide how to play. Different
The past couple of weeks have been the first since the New Year that we haven’t played a tournament of some international prestige, so I am going to go back to the Lederer weekend at the end of February, London’s premier invitational event. It was held at the extremely elegant RAC Club in Pall Mall,
Unless you’re an expert, it often pays to keep quiet at the bridge table — something I really ought to remember. It shames me to think of all the times I’ve made a mistake and then tried to justify it, invariably using flawed reasoning which makes me look even more idiotic. That’s bad enough; but
So many tournaments — so little space. Last week saw two of the very best London has to offer: Terry Hewett’s ninth and final Night of the Stars, a charity event that auctioned off 56 ‘Stars’ to club players for a night of fun, excitement and glamour — and all at the bridge table. The
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, and canvassing opinion, about what to lead from AKxxx (or AK10xx) against no trump contracts. Yes, I know, I should be spending my time pondering weightier issues, but it’s surprising how often that particular dilemma crops up. Holding AKxx, you would clearly kick off with
Pierre Zimmermann, Monaco’s uber-sponsor, has put another unmissable, thrilling tournament in the calendar. The first European Winter Games gave those who entered the kind of event we no longer get with the World or European Championships. One week of bridge, 60 boards a day, with a BAM (board a match) side event that was terrific.
It’s got to be the most bizarre news story of the year: last week, no fewer than 50 Thai police officers burst into a bridge club in Pattaya — a city rife with crime and prostitution — and arrested 32 elderly players, many of them British ex-pats. Gambling is strictly forbidden in Thailand, and the
The Brits have done brilliantly in Icelandair’s annual bridge festival in Reykjavik and this year was no different. The winners of the two-day pairs tournament were the Anglo–Bulgarian partnership of Rumen Trendafilov, who has played many times on the Bulgarian Open team, and Nevena Senior, who has won two World Championships (among many other titles)
