I was lucky enough to sit next to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd at a friend’s dinner the other night. I’d been chatting earlier to his wife, the novelist Polly Sampson, who had mentioned that she’d like to learn bridge some day, and so I tried to enthuse him too. Perhaps I got a little
The best EBU tournament of the year is, IMHO, the Schapiro Spring Foursomes, held at the beginning of May in lovely Stratford-upon-Avon. The format is double knockout with one team emerging undefeated on Monday afternoon. For the second year running that team has been Frances Hinden’s squad of four (almost all the other teams field
I couldn’t help snorting when I came across an article in the Guardian last week (about the ongoing legal battle to get bridge recognised as a sport) in which the game was described as ‘genteel and physically unchallenging’. What? Bridge is physically exhausting — all that sustained concentration leaves you floored. As for genteel —
When I first started playing bridge, about 15 years ago, I ‘trained’ at TGR’s rubber bridge club, which was located in a dingy basement in Bayswater Road. I didn’t notice the dinge — I felt intoxicated just walking in there knowing I would get a game. In those days we could smoke in the back
Congratulations to the Welsh women’s team, who staged one of the most spectacular comebacks I’ve ever seen at last weekend’s Lady Milne (the women’s home internationals). They were languishing in bottom place on Sunday morning, but managed to claw all the way to the top by the end of the day. You can imagine the
When I was growing up, the loudest, most explosive arguments erupted when my parents played bridge together. Not surprisingly, when my father offered to teach me I made my excuses and ran. Jasmine Bakhshi is in the lucky position of having David for a father. Not only is David on the England Open team that
Bridge has always been a game of highs and lows, but what happened to Janet de Botton and her partner Artur Malinowski at the Easter Championship Pairs was more like being strapped to a rollercoaster. It started when everyone was staring at the computer screen waiting for the final results. The top three pairs —
Wednesday night is league night. Sacrosanct. I’ve missed only one in seven years and that was when my daughter was giving birth. Priorities, you know. But last Wednesday I had an offer I couldn’t refuse: dinner with Henry Kissinger. Not a date, I reluctantly confess, a smallish dinner, but you can’t have everything. He may
Janet de Botton and I decided to spice things up a bit at the Young Chelsea heat of the nationwide Portland Pairs on Sunday by having a small bet about which of us would do better. She was partnering the fiery Thor-Erik Hoftaniska and I was partnering the unflappable Phil King. When Janet began surging
You either love rubber bridge or you hate it. Personally I love it: I love the freedom it gives you to play when it suits you. I love the fact that you play with and against different players, which certainly keeps you alert and hones your ‘table presence’. I love the fact that it gives
Why do men always yell at the television or keep up a running commentary while watching sport? My husband does it whenever the rugby is on. After I told him to pipe down the other day, he quite reasonably pointed out that I do it myself when I’m following bridge online — he has to
What a week it’s been. On Thursday night the incomparable Terry Hewett held her annual charity bonanza Night of the Stars in which 52 bridge luminaries (well, 51 and me) were auctioned to non-professionals, raising a record £50,000 for four charities. I played with the heavenly Bernard Themis, who should have learned his lesson as
Bridge players never get bored of each other’s company for one simple reason: interesting hands are like juicy bits of gossip, and there is an endless supply to discuss and mull over. The things other people do! The things we ourselves have done! Here’s an extraordinary deal that has had everyone chattering from Warsaw to
Couples that play together stay together is not a mantra you hear too often in the bridge world. Indeed most couples who play together come closer to murder than to renewing their vows. The shaking head of the male. The withering comments. The relentless hand-hogging. Even demure little me has thought about whether a life
Before returning to Australia about a decade ago, Michael Courtney spent several years playing high-stake rubber bridge in London. Those of us who occasionally kibitzed him will never forget his sheer brilliance at the table. Michael has the pleasingly shambolic look of a mad professor, and his imagination seems to operate in a different dimension:
There is something decidedly Groundhog Day about the international bridge calendar. The second weekend of January is TGR’s Auction Pairs and the last weekend is Iceland’s wildly popular four-day Pairs and Teams tournament. Everything ticked along happily in the same vein as every other year. Two days of Pairs (in which we came nowhere) and
If you and your partner ever want to improve your bidding system, I can’t recommend Phil King highly enough as a bridge coach. Catherine Seale and I booked him for a few sessions in preparation for last weekend’s Lady Milne trials, and although we didn’t qualify (my mistakes are too embarrassing to mention), we both
2015 got off to a rollicking start with TGR’s sixth Auction Pairs — chief rollickers being the Norwegians, whose unparalleled appetite for the sauce and disdain for sleep is matched only by the brilliance of their play. Leading the 70 pairs after the first day were Frank Svindal and Tom Johansen (bought in the auction
This may sound odd, given its male-only membership, but the Portland is one of my favourite bridge clubs. I’m one of many women who are invited there regularly (in fact, I can claim to be the first woman to have played at its new premises in London’s St James’s Square), and we’re always welcomed with
The last tournament of the year is the hugely popular one-day Swiss Teams in the EBU’s Year End Congress in London. I normally play all four days (two pairs events preceding the teams) but this year I limply decided to take a longer Christmas break and was raring to go for the Teams. The first