Reviews from Bridge Plus

26 February 2000

Prestigious bridge tournaments do not come much bigger than the Bermuda Bowl World Open Teams Championship, and bridge paperbacks do not come much bigger than Bermuda Bowl, which has 252 jumbo-sized pages. Starting in 1950, the championship has been held thirty-three times, and the book tells the story of each one, as well as describing some of the key deals. One of the interesting aspects for the reader is to see the development of bidding over the last fifty years, and, as an example of how old-fashioned the bidding logic was in 1950, this is one of the deals from that year, when three teams were involved, America, England and Europe:

Dealer: North. Game All.

			K 7
			K 9 8 7 4
			Q 10 9 2
			8 3
	10 6 5 4				A Q J 3
	10 2				3
	8 6 4				A K J 7 5
	A Q 10 7				J 9 5
			9 8 2
			A Q J 6 5
			3
			K 6 4 2

After a 1 opening from East and a 1 overcall by South, virtually all players nowadays would make a positive bid on the West hand, either 1 or a negative double, but, in the match between America and England, both Wests passed.

Now the spotlight was on North and, here again, the modern approach would be to bid a pre-emptive 3 on the North hand, but the American North made what was considered then to be the normal value bid of 2. This allowed Leslie Dodds to come in with 2 on the East hand, so East-West reached 4, which made with an overtrick.

As part of their forward-thinking, the English players had agreed beforehand to use a raise to 3 on a hand of this type, enabling Joel Tarlo to make that bid on the North hand, effectively silencing East. Sitting South, Maurice Harrison-Gray now bid the game as a double shot, and it would have made had the black Aces been transposed, but even a two-trick loss gave England a 450 point gain.

However, the Americans went on to win the championship that year, as they did on the next three occasions it was held. The spell was broken in the 5th Bermuda Bowl at New York in 1955, when Great Britain beat North America by 5420 points.

Representing Great Britain were Terence Reese, Boris Schapiro, Kenneth Konstam, Leslie Dodds, Adam Meredith and Jordanis Pavlides, led by non-playing captain Reginald Corwen. For anyone who likes to read about deals from matches, this book has everything including the history of the Bermuda Bowl, and there is plenty to go at!

Peter Littlewood