The European Team Championships drew to a close last week and the most successful country overall was …England! The doughty Seniors took Gold, the Women took Silver and the Open Team took Bronze. I hardly went out in the ten days of the tournament, so glued was I to BBO and the fortunes of everyone
I’m not trying to pretend it will make up for the drubbing England took in the World Cup, but if you want to feel a bit better about our sportsmen and women I suggest you log on to BBO to watch the 52nd European Team Championships in Opatija, Croatia. All three of our teams, Open,
The final match in the second division of Young Chelsea’s London Super League was as exciting as it gets. Two teams (out of ten) were going to be promoted, and four teams were within a gnat’s whisker of each other. We were narrowly leading and were playing McGuire, lying second. We needed to secure a
It is always exciting when a strong new team’s tournament enters the calendar, and the inaugural Balaton Invitational, held outside Budapest at Lake Balaton, looks set to become an annual event. Two members of my team, Thor-Erik Hoftaniska (Hoffa) and Thomas Charlsen (Charley), played for the Norwegian Open Team (and won the event) and I
The Schapiro Spring Foursomes, held in early May in Stratford-upon-Avon, is one of the great tournaments and this time it attracted more international world stars than ever before. The legendary Lavazza team came for the first time, as did World Champions Tor Helness from Norway and Peter Berteau and Johan Upmark from Sweden, charming everyone
Somewhere highly intellectual I read that they were bringing back the Generation Game, recalling, in all their excruciating mundanity, Brucie’s catchphrases. I had to eat my own snootiness at the Easter Championship Pairs, won by Susanna, yes OUR Susanna, playing with England supremo David Gold. ‘Didn’t she do well?’ I shrieked — and indeed she
I have always been drawn to a bit of a rogue and I must admit I found the coughing German Doctors, banned by the WBF for cheating, highly amusing. At the 2008 inaugural World Mind Sports in Beijing, they played England in the semi-final, and in the last set went for five huge penalties almost
Dallas to me was an Eighties TV series with huge shoulder pads until I arrived there to play the American Spring Nationals last week. The American Nationals are bigger, better and brighter than anything we Brits can imagine — after the first week they had filled over 7,000 tables — and it is organised so
A number of young Israelis are taking the International bridge world by storm. All in their twenties, their achievements so far have been impressive and show no signs of slowing down. Their Junior team took Silver in China’s 2012 World Youth Championships. Lotan Fisher and Ron Schwartz won the coveted Cavendish Pairs in Monaco, and
Now and then an event enters the annual bridge calendar and becomes an instant ‘must play’. TGRs Auction Pairs is one and Terry Hewett’s ‘Night of the Stars’ is another. Last week 53 ‘Stars’ were auctioned and played with their sponsors (all the money raised goes to charity) in what must be one of the
Bridge players are a generous bunch — both with their expertise and their time. There are many charity events to which they contribute willingly, but the one that has become the most successful is Terry Hewett’s Night of the Stars. This year it is being held on 27 February at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability
January ended for me with the annual Icelandic Bridge Festival in Reykjavik. There may be a better tournament but I haven’t played it. This year it attracted a record number of entries for the Pairs and Teams — and a record number of Brits. The star for me was the divine Mrs P, playing with
2014 has started with a bang! The second weekend of January saw TGR’s fifth Auction Pairs in which 71 pairs were sold in record time by the world’s most glamorous auctioneer, Ruth Zandberg. This event has become a wild success, with top international players coming from all over the globe. After two days, five pairs
First up, HNY to one and all and especially my regular reader (no, not you mummy) John Hinde, who wrote me a charming email very politely pointing out the absurdity of one of my columns. I am so with you John — it was ridiculous — but it happened! Secondly, congrats to my good friend
Autumn 2013 has been the single worst season of my bridge career. Actually, do I have a bridge career? Doesn’t a career suggest some kind of financial gain and status, rather than a substanstial loss and rapid downward spiral? My Autumnus horribilis kicked off with the first of three Premier League weekends, from which we
‘Yikes! I’ve been Grosvenored!’ This is a wail you will hear from time to time when a Declarer has been ‘had’ by the dreaded Grosvenor Gambit. It is explained in The Official Encyclopaedia of Bridge as follows: ‘A humorous psychological ploy described by Frederick Turner of Los Angeles in The Bridge World 1973. A defender
My plan this week was to write wittily, but modestly, about our rise from the bowels of relegation after the first two disastrous weekends of the Premier League. I was going to tell you how important it is not to give up, to have faith in yourself and your team-mates and to keep on fighting
I love Bernard Teltscher. In fact, I proposed to him recently, but he politely declined, saying I was too old for him! He is 92 so I could be forgiven for thinking I was in with a chance. Bernard has sponsored the Lederer Memorial Trophy, England’s premier Invitational Teams’ Tournament, for as long as anyone
The season got off to a very bad start for my team — and continues in much the same vein. The Premier League, which has become the trials for the Camrose, is played over three weekends, this year starting in Manchester. Our first match was against David Mossop’s strong squad and we did rather well!
I defy anyone, even Tolstoy were he still alive and were he to abandon War and Peace for a bridge column, to avoid a shed load of clichés when describing the final of the Venice Cup in Bali, between the magnificent English Ladies and their American counterparts. Let me make do with heart-stopping. With seven