The newly launched Zimmermann team, relocated from Monaco to Switzerland, were victorious at the European Transnational Championships in Poland in June. The tarnish has been rather rubbed off their many European and World titles when one of his previous pairs, Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes, were banned for alleged cheating. Pierre is now surrounding himself
The city of Poznan in Poland became heaven on earth last month, swarming as it was with hundreds of fellow bridge addicts and most of the world’s top players. It was the 11th European Transnational Championships, and I went to play in the Mixed Teams with a wonderful group: Sebastian Atisen, Andrew McIntosh, Sara Moran,
At any big international bridge tournament, the chances are you’ll end up playing a star name or two. And while it’s always a privilege, I find it hard to stop my inner voice whispering how incomparably better they are than me; I’m just a sitting duck. I have a mantra, however, which helps: ‘Anyone is
A few years ago I went to Dallas with my team to play in the Summer National, the main event being the Spingold, a knockout tournament which attracts some of the best teams in the world. We did rather well and found ourselves in the quarter finals, and our opponents were Marty Fleisher’s team of
Gunnar Hallberg is a tall, big-boned Viking of a player, who, three decades ago, decided to cross the North Sea to raid the high-stake bridge clubs of England. He’s lived here ever since, and Sweden’s loss, it turns out, has been our gain. He’s gone on to represent England numerous times in European and world
‘There are only three kinds of Bridge players; those who can count and those who can’t.’ And there are only two types of reader: those who find this funny and those who, like me, don’t. It’s not so much that it’s hard to count to 13 – it isn’t really – it’s just that there
Everyone has moments of tiredness during bridge tournaments. But it’s a merciless game. Taking your eye off the ball for a second – even missing something as small as a spot-card – can lead to disaster. At the recent Spring Fours in Bristol, on a team with Sebastian Atisen, Alice Coptcoat and Ollie Burgess, I
There are many words in the English language that you need to be Susie Dent* to use correctly. Disinterested and uninterested, elder and older and fewer and less to name three that I struggle with. When today’s hand came up in an EBU online League match I was extremely grateful to have ‘Assumption’ and ‘Presumption’
Let’s face it, part-score contracts can be a bit of a yawn. When browsing through bridge books or bulletins, I always skim over part-scores to read about games and slams – that’s when my adrenalin gets going. And I must admit, it’s the same at the table: the higher the contract, the more alive I
Counting, counting and counting are the three most important things to consider, whether you are playing in your local bridge club duplicate or the Bermuda Bowl. Counting declarer’s tricks when you are defending is hard when you are very busy counting your own hand and, when dummy goes down, you can start to work out
A few years ago, Sally Brock – women’s world champion many times over – told me she’d like some coaching in declarer-play from Artur Malinowski. Artur, she said, just seems to make more contracts than other people. And it’s true: he has extraordinary table presence. He relies on ‘reading’ his opponents as much as he
One FAQ by people who are thinking of learning bridge is: ‘Do you have to be good at maths to become a good bridge player?’ The answer is you don’t need to be Rain Man but familiarity with numeracy will be an asset. Logic plays a big part in making a good player and, if
Just like having a natural aptitude for drawing or music, some lucky people seem to be born with a gift for bridge. My friend Oliver Burgess is one of them. He plays with effortless elegance, visualising end-plays or spotting chances to false-card while most of us are still struggling to marshal our thoughts. Ollie’s gifts
A couple of weekends ago, the Scottish Bridge Union ran the inaugural British Isles Trophy, a mixed team’s event for the Home Counties. It was played on RealBridge, the website that allows players to both see and hear each other. Bridge, being the last bastion of ‘hilarious’ misogyny, always has an alpha chuckle when somebody
I was taken aback by the letter that accompanied my daughter’s school report last week. ‘Traditionally, reports have been written by teachers,’ it stated. But to save teachers time, ‘the school has moved to an AI-supported system where the teachers enter bullet points and the AI crafts suitable prose… We hope that you won’t notice
I am sure that readers of this column need no introduction to Victor Mollo’s most famous creation, The Hideous Hog. Bridge in the Menagerie was first published in 1965 and today, Mollo’s stereotypes are as sharp and apposite as they were 60 years ago. And don’t think (as I did) that hogging is an exclusively
It can be hard to recover your morale when you have a bad start in a tournament. You came in all positive and then need to claw your way back to average. Not everyone feels that way, though. I recently went to Bath with Sebastian Atisen, a regular partner, to play in the Wiltshire Congress
Everyone has good days and bad days; no one more than me. I like to think my A game is pretty good but my B game is such a car crash that sometimes I feel like giving up. Great players also have A and B days, the difference being smaller the better the player. Towards
For me, bridge is often a game of ‘If only…’. When it comes to complex hands, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve let myself down. And yet, however frustrating it is to know that I’ll never play with the brilliance and clarity of my heroes, I’m constantly motivated to keep trying – and that’s
The European Transnational Championships were held last week in Prague, and were won by the gargantuanly strong Zimmerman team, but it was not plain sailing. They appeared to have lost their quarter-final to the Italian team Bianchi, but that doesn’t happen in Zimmerland. Twice during the 56-board, day-long match they asked for rulings against something