Susanna Gross

Bravissimo! The Italians have won gold yet again at the European Champions Cup. The event was launched in 2002, and since then Italy has won all but twice. England has never won, but as the host nation this year we got to field two teams, and they came third and fifth — not quite so magnifico perhaps, but still our best result yet. I was, as usual, glued to BBO, and saw some thrilling bridge. Almost every N–S pair managed to reach 7♠ on this deal — not all made it, but Dennis Bilde, for Italy, and David Bakhshi, for England, showed perfect technique: Against Bilde, West led the ♠3. Bilde won with the ♠Q, cashed the ♠A, led a heart to the ace and ruffed a heart.

Congratulations to my old pal Lou Hobhouse, who has just been appointed the new editor of the English Bridge Union magazine. I’ve known Lou for 20 years and can vouch for the fact that she’s as devoted to bridge as anyone I’ve ever met. She even played on her wedding night — she and her husband Robert invited me and a friend to make up a four and we played until dawn (Lou still in her wedding dress). Many years and many children later, Lou is now a successful bridge teacher based in Somerset. I don’t see as much of her as I’d like to, but she was in London recently for the magazine interview, and we managed to fit in a game at the Young Chelsea afterwards. The following deal shows just what a shrewd player she is.

It’s not surprising that so many bridge players feel such a sentimental attachment to The Young Chelsea. The club was founded nearly 50 years ago, and since then has been a home from home for countless lovers of the game, and the breeding ground for many of England’s greatest stars. If you haven’t yet been to its new premises in Shepherds Bush you really should; you won’t find a better standard of duplicate anywhere. The Young Chelsea also hosts the London Super League, a teams event set up by its manager Nick Sandqvist, which again I heartily recommend.

There’s no doubt about it: I’m an addict. A BBO addict. Since the Bermuda Bowl began, nearly a fortnight ago, the first thing I do each morning is log on to Bridge Base Online to follow the action. And I stay logged on until play stops at about 3 p.m. (7.30 p.m. in Chennai). I’m twitchy if anything takes me away from my laptop; I even watch it on the bus. But who can blame me, when our boys are playing so magnificently? Where they’ve really excelled is in the bidding. David Gold has always told me it pays to bid aggressively — and he and the team are certainly proving the point. They keep putting their opponents under pressure, obstructing them, pushing them to the 5-level and then defeating them by a trick. Take this example from the match against France.

This has been the most shocking saga in the entire history of bridge. In the face of overwhelming evidence that members of their teams have been cheating, Israel, Monaco and Germany have all withdrawn from the world championships, which begin this week in Chennai. So far the German pair alone has admitted their guilt, but no one has any doubt about the other two. So much drama; so many careers and reputations ruined. And how innocent are the teammates who, as some suggest, must have had their suspicions but said nothing? And what about all the players who may have been robbed of victory over the years? I’m thinking particularly of our own England open team who, in the 2014 European Championships, took bronze — behind Monaco and Israel.

The bridge world continues to be electrified by the scandal that Janet wrote about last week. Lotan Fisher and Ron Schwartz (‘F-S’), the superstar players accused of cheating, are part of the Israeli team which qualified to play in the world championships held in China later this month. Now, in light of the accusations, Israel has withdrawn, a move which has been widely applauded. Meanwhile, Boye Brogeland, the Norwegian international who made his allegations via a specially created website, www.bridgecheaters.com, has received a letter from F-S’s lawyer demanding he make a public apology and offering to settle out of court for a million US dollars.

I hope Zia Mahmood will forgive me. It’s not often I come across a contract that he has failed to make while his opponent in the other room has succeeded — and I can’t resist writing about it. The occasion was the final of this year’s Vanderbilt Cup, the hugely prestigious American knock-out teams event. What it goes to show is not that Zia took an inferior line (heaven forfend!), but what a difference an opening lead can make. That single card can determine the entire fate of a contract. Against Zia, West (Marc Jacobus) led the ♦8. If trumps are 2-2, and West has no immediate ruff, there is only a trump and a heart to lose. But that diamond looked very much like a singleton: if Zia touched trumps, East might fly in with the ♣A to give West a ruff.

I hadn’t realised quite what a thriving bridge scene Manchester has until spending a weekend there recently. I went with Sally Brock and Barry Myers for the annual mixed pivot teams held in memory of Michelle Brunner. It’s a wonderful event: Michelle, who died of cancer four years ago, was one of England’s top players and a much-loved teacher at Manchester Bridge Club. The room was packed with her friends and former pupils, as well as many of Manchester’s bridge stars, like Alan Mould and, of course, Michelle’s husband John Holland.

Imagine going to a golf tournament and finding yourself competing against Rory McIlroy; or a tennis match and facing Roger Federer. That’s the wonderful thing about bridge: turn up to any open international event and there they are, up close, the superstars of the game — playing against you! I recently spent a gruelling seven days at the Open European Championships in Tromso (Norway), playing in the mixed teams and pairs with David Gold (we reached the A final of the pairs but then floundered). Each time we competed against a champion — be it Geir Helgemo or Sabine Auken or Philippe Cronier — I felt such a sense of privilege. But beware: too much awe can distract you. Which is why this week’s hand has no merit except to serve as a warning.

Omar Sharif did so much for bridge. He inspired countless others through his own devotion to the game (‘Acting is my living but bridge is my passion’); he promoted it around the world with his travelling ‘bridge circus’; he lent his glamour to every major tournament — even turning down films if they clashed. And he set a perfect example of gentlemanly behaviour. Zia Mahmood, one of his favourite partners, remembers that the only time Omar got cross with him was when Zia doubled the opponents in 7NT holding an ace. ‘He said the score would have been almost as good without the double — and not doubling would have shown more class and style.’ But Sharif wasn’t just a celebrity who loved bridge. He was a true talent in his own right.

I had no idea until last week that Burt Lancaster was a passionate bridge player. I found out after meeting an elderly man who told me that he once partnered the actor at rubber bridge. The man did something terrible in defence, at which point Lancaster reached across the table, grabbed him by the lapels and warned him never to play like that again. When I got home I googled Burt Lancaster and discovered that he did indeed take the game very seriously. I also came across a mention of his second wedding, to which he invited so many bridge players that they joked about holding an impromptu tournament. I wonder whether he ever partnered the great British player Adam ‘Plum’ Meredith?

Captaining a bridge team in a knock-out competition can be a thankless task. Sometimes, the hardest thing of all is simply finding a date when everyone can play. Several years ago, for instance, I managed to get my dream teammates for the Hubert Phillips Bowl: David Gold, Andrew Robson and Alexander Allfrey. Trying to arrange our very first match nearly gave me a nervous breakdown: our opponents offered five possible evenings over a four-week period (which was all they were required to do). After hundreds of emails to and fro, it became clear that there was simply no evening we could all do — and we were forced to concede the match before playing a single card.

The Hacketts are probably the best known bridge-playing family in the world. They live in Manchester but travel constantly — you’ll see at least one Hackett pop up at any tournament. There’s patriarch Paul, a lifelong bridge professional and part of the England Seniors Team who just can’t stop winning world and European championships. There are his sons, twins Justin and Jason, who were taught to play at 11 and went on to become the youngest pros in Europe. And there’s Barbara, married to Justin, a former world women’s champion.

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 carried away. Bridge, I said, was as good as life gets; he had no much idea how much fun was in store for him; in fact, why didn’t I book some lessons for him this very summer? ‘I can’t, I’ve got a world tour,’ he replied. ‘Pfff, that’s no excuse,’ I chided. ‘You can easily fit in a little bridge...’. That’s when he decided to give it to me straight: ‘I’d rather be dead.

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 — ha! On the whole, we’re such a boorish and unkempt lot that the English Bridge Union feels obliged to place a slip of paper on every table before a tournament, exhorting players to ‘greet others in a friendly manner’ and — I’m not joking — ‘take care of your personal grooming’. Even the way we treat our own partners would astound the non-initiated.

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 celebrations: the last time Wales won was 27 years ago. Which just goes to show the importance of keeping your nerve. During the recent Yeh Bros Cup in Beijing, another team kept its nerve under even greater pressure. There are very few bridge events offering big cash prizes, but Yeh Bros is an exception: the winners collect $150,000. In the final, the China Open team was neck and neck with the Redbulls (made up of players from China and the Netherlands).

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 — Janet included — were within a hair’s breath of each other, and with each new score their positions kept switching. Then the last score came in — Janet and Artur had won! Off they went for a celebratory bottle of champagne. Later came a message: sorry, a score was wrongly entered, they were second. Utter deflation. An hour later, another text came: mistake, she had come first. Elation!

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 ahead, I bemoaned my fate to another of the players — Nicola Smith (multiple world champion). She told me that many years ago, she’d had a similar bet with the bridge writer Alan Hiron. Alan had actually done poorly, but at the end he filled out a new scorecard of perfect scores — and showed it to Nicola. ‘Oh, we won’t beat that,’ she conceded. As he had to dash, he asked her to write him a cheque.

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 put up with constant mutterings of ‘Hmmm, yes ...What? No!’ Watching bridge really is as thrilling as watching any sport — especially if you know the players and have a team to support. I was glued to my computer during the recent Lederer Trophy, the invitation tournament held each year in London. My loyalties were divided; I was rooting for two of the teams — the de Botton Team (headed by my friend Janet) and the England Open (containing my friend David Gold).

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 London and back again. It occurred during the final of the Polish Teams Championships, when the two top teams of Martens and Vitas were slugging it out. At the first table, the famous Krzysztof Martens was North, his partner Dominik Filipowicz was South: North opened a ‘gambling 3NT’, showing a long solid minor and no side stopper. South knew North’s suit had to be clubs, so he punted 7♣.