Susanna Gross

I went cycling in the Pyrenees with my teenagers last week. Every time we stopped for a break, out came an iPhone, to be met with the usual groan: ‘Put it away, stop staring at your screen.’ Except it wasn’t me nagging – it was them. I couldn’t help myself: the world bridge championships were taking place, and I was desperate to follow the action. It couldn’t have been more gripping. The England women got through to the semi-finals and ended up winning bronze. Our open team deserve equal praise for making it to the quarter--finals and putting up a superb fight against the all-star Swiss team, sponsored by Pierre Zimmerman. Switzerland went on to win gold, but England gave them a serious run for their money, leading for much of the match.

I don’t play rubber bridge nearly as much as I used to, but I still enjoy the occasional game at TGR’s. The stakes normally range from £10 to £30 per hundred. Although I play at the lower end, it’s still a nerve-racking amount, especially when cutting into a game with top-class regulars like Gunnar Hallberg and Robert Sheehan. But this is no place for sissies – the bridge is fast; people get heated; and a big loss can feel a bit like getting mugged. Many years ago, the late great Oswald Jacoby tried to warn a friend against playing rubber bridge. The man responded, ‘What’s the worst that can happen? I play like an idiot and lose a lot of money?’ Jacoby shook his head: ‘That’s the best that can happen.

I still haven’t got over the novelty of sitting down at home, opening my laptop, and – just like fantasy football – logging on to play against some of the biggest names in the bridge world, including people I’ve been in awe of for years. The sense of privilege will never wear off, which is why I’m so glad that the online invitational tournaments are still going strong, and that I’m lucky enough to participate. When I’m not playing, watching is just as rewarding. If ever you needed proof that great minds think alike, you only need to see how many of the players tackle the same hands in the same way.

Few things in life compare to the joy of playing bridge, but if I rack my brain I can think of one: watching other people playing bridge. Tuning in to BBO’s Vugraph is not just fun, but a great way of improving our own game. And it can be quite an ego-boost. It’s easy, looking at all four hands, to see how a contract should be played – how often have we all tut-tutted when someone goes wrong, convinced that we would have found the right line? Kibitzing world-class players, however, the opposite is true – when they take a different line to the one we envisage, it shines a spotlight on our own limitations. The other day, while watching the Polish Premier League, 3NT was reached at both tables. Piotr Gawrys and Artur Malinowski were at the helm.

A couple of weeks ago, just as I’d begun to think that if I hadn’t got Covid by now I never would, I succumbed to Omicron. The timing was terrible: I was due to play in the European women’s trials the next day, and hated letting my partner down. Still, I was cheered up by several messages from friends, including Zia Mahmood, who told me that he also had Covid. We compared notes: a cough, some aches and pains — nothing too bad. It was only the next day, when I tried my hand at an online duplicate, that I realised there really is such a thing as Covid brain-fog: I couldn’t concentrate at all. Instead, I took to bed to watch some online bridge — and lo and behold, there was Zia playing a match. The longer I kibitzed, the more amazed I was.

I’ve been friends with the England player Mike Bell for many years; as top bridge professionals go, I’d say he has fewer eccentricities than most. But there’s one thing I can never get used to: in the depths of winter, he refuses to wear anything but a T-shirt. He doesn’t even own a jumper, let alone a coat. Last Sunday, it was an unusually cold evening, and as we strolled out of the Young Chelsea bridge club in Hammersmith — along with his wife Sarah Bell and Ollie Burgess — I made the mistake of telling him he was crazy not to put on something warm. His response was to whip off his T-shirt and walk bare-chested down the street. As it happens, it was Mike’s second strip of the day.

Almost everyone has a set of ‘carding’ agreements with their partners to convey information when defending. But I’m always amazed by how many people feel compelled to do so at every turn, broadcasting loudly how many cards they have in each suit, and whether or not they hold an honour. The truth is, the better your opponents, the more they will make use of the information — and the better your partners, the less they need it. I know a couple of professionals who actually ban their clients from giving any signals at all. That was certainly true of the great Rixi Marcus. ‘Don’t give me any signals!’ she would bark at lesser players. ‘After a few tricks I will know what you’ve got better than you know yourself.

We’re all guilty of making silly mistakes at the bridge table and then hurriedly trying to explain them away — but what do you think was the most overused excuse of 2021? The answer has to be…‘Misclick!’ No wonder so few tournaments allow you to request an ‘Undo’ any more: too many players were claiming to have misclicked when they’d probably misplayed. People can still ask for an ‘Undo’ in the bidding, though, and that seems perfectly reasonable. Kibitzing one of the final online tournaments of last year, I saw such an unlikely bid that I immediately assumed it was a misclick — until I saw it was made by my friend Steve Root.

All the best people play bridge. Stephen Sondheim, who died two weeks ago, was mad about the game. In his memoir Big Deal, the concert pianist and bridge professional Augie Boehm recalls playing with him in a game organised by Alan Truscott, the New York Times’s bridge columnist. Sondheim had at first declined the invitation, fearing the others would be too good for him. As it happened, Truscott and Boehm had recently collaborated on a musical review of bridge songs. When Truscott asked Sondheim if he could send him some lyrics to look at, Sondheim changed his mind about coming. ‘If you have the temerity to send me your lyrics,’ he wrote back, ‘I can summon the nerve to play bridge with you.

Succumbing to your emotions at the bridge table can be fatal. Whatever you’re feeling, get a grip! Easier said than done, of course. I’m usually pretty composed, but last week I felt an inexplicable sense of anxiety while playing on Jonathan Harris’s team. It’s always a privilege to be asked, and I felt acutely embarrassed that my underbidding led to two missed slams. I gave myself a stern talking-to afterwards, but what turned out to be a far better tonic was watching Marusa Gold — a regular on the team — display so beautifully the true importance of holding your nerve. She was South, North was her partner Todor Tiholov: 1♣ was ‘Precision’, showing 16+. 1♠ was game-forcing with 5+ hearts.

It can’t have been a surprise to anyone who knows him that when Andrew Black — Bertie to his friends — decided to get serious about bridge, he was thinking big. He doesn’t do things by halves. His passion for sports betting led him to co-found the world’s first and largest bet exchange, Betfair, in 2000. His love of horse-racing spurred him on to be a successful owner and breeder; in 2009 he joined forces with the former England footballer Michael Owen to become co-owner of the renowned racing complex Manor House Stables in Cheshire. And then there’s bridge. Over the past few years Bertie and his squad — Team Black — have had an ever-greater impact on the international stage.

It was great to be back playing live bridge at the Portland Club last week. I was lucky enough to be invited to one of its first dinners since lockdown, and I’m pleased to say that nothing had changed: a lively supper was followed by brisk and exciting bridge until the small hours, and a terrible but strangely satisfying hangover the next day. I don’t normally drink while playing, but the Portland is one of the most enjoyably relaxed bridge clubs in London. Despite the high stakes, there’s always fun and banter, and certainly never any shouting, blaming or calling for directors. To eschew the very fine wine on offer would be quite against the spirit of the place — that’s my excuse, anyway.

The Gold Cup is the most prestigious Open Teams event in Britain, and has been ever since Colonel ‘Pops’ Beasley first held the trophy aloft in 1932. Last weekend’s online final was as thrilling as any I can remember — a neck-and-neck race between Janet de Botton’s team and Tim Leslie’s, with de Botton pulling ahead in the last few boards to win by 20 imps. The players had been battling it out from Saturday morning until Sunday evening with hardly a break. But if they were exhausted they didn’t show it — they fought for every point right up to the end in a terrific display of stamina and concentration.

Online bridge has been a lifeline for many players these past 18 months. But not everyone wanted to try it. Now that clubs have reopened, I keep hearing the refrain: ‘Sorry, partner, I’m very rusty.’ It’s true — playing bridge after a long absence isn’t like getting back on a bicycle. You don’t forget how to play, of course, but you become less sharp; the muscles of the brain used for bridge go flabby. I feel it happening after a mere two weeks away, so I can imagine how daunting it is to play for the first time since lockdown. One aspect of the game that doesn’t suffer through lack of practice, however, is imagination.

‘Table presence’ is a funny old expression in bridge. You might think it means what it would in any other context — that someone’s presence can be felt; that they command respect or dominate the table. In fact, it means something else altogether: you may be quiet and meek as a mouse, but if you are busy watching your opponents and gathering information from their behaviour, you have table presence. Artur Malinowski, the manager of TGR’s, is someone who has it to a frightening degree. When he’s your opponent, it’s not your cards you need to keep close to your chest, it’s your very thoughts. This hand is from the recent Crockford’s final. North’s 2NT showed both minors. 3♥ asked: 4♥ showed 6–5 and a void.

It’s not often that bridge makes headlines, but last week something extraordinary happened. At the online European Qualifier for the 2022 bridge world championships, Italy was boycotted by every other nation. The boycott stemmed from their decision to include Fulvio Fantoni in their team. He and his former partner, Claudio Nunes, were once ranked No. 1 and 2 in the world. But they were found guilty of cheating at the 2014 European Championships by exchanging information through the positioning of their cards, and banned from playing. They later appealed to the Court of Arbitration in Sport, which ruled that the case was not ‘proven’, and the ban was lifted. However, no one in the bridge world doubted their guilt — nor that they had been cheating for years.

Live bridge is back. It kicked off two weekends ago with Eastbourne’s Swiss Pairs. I went with my friend Ollie Burgess, and although numbers were down, things were as they’d always been: the same familiar faces and scarcely a face mask in sight. But after competing online for so long, it felt strange — like appearing in a documentary about how bridge used to be played in the past, with bidding boxes, Bridgemates and duplicate boards that we slid across the floor to the next table once we’d finished with them. Soon enough, though, the sensation of real cards in our hands began to feel not just normal but pretty wonderful.

To be a killer bridge player, you need to be aggressive. Many of us are hampered by timidity, especially when it comes to making penalty doubles. All too often, we ignore our instinct to reach for the red card: we dwell on how foolish we’ll look if we’re wrong, and how cross our partner will be. But as Zia Mahmood says: ‘If every contract you double goes down, you’re not doubling enough.’ Zia routinely doubles auctions where the opponents have bid hesitatingly to game. As he sees it, if they’ve both limited their hands, you’re in with a good chance. Moreover, by upping the ante, the added pressure on declarer may cloud his thinking. This hand from a recent rubber bridge game seems to prove his point.

Bridge is a game you can never fully master, which is why it’s so endlessly stimulating. No sooner have you puffed your way up one learning curve than another beckons, harder than the last. Over the past two decades (and more), I’ve read countless bridge books and strived to sharpen my game by every means possible. Like most of us, I’m still far short of where I want to be. Yet it’s only in the past few years that I’ve realised that what matters most — at an advanced level — is not cardplay or defence. No, watch the stars and you’ll soon see: championships are won or lost in the bidding. I’d even say it might be the hardest part of the game — a constant test of your judgment.

Top bridge players have a spooky ability to recall thousands of hands, often from many years back. With so many cards stored in their hard drive, perhaps it’s not surprising how forgetful they can be in other areas. I once had dinner with the great Bob Hamman, and after discussing some of his recent bridge hands — he had perfect recall, of course — I asked if I could test his memory for the more personal events in his life. He happily played along. It was even worse than I’d suspected: he struggled to remember the year of his marriage, how he proposed, or where he was when his first child was born — until he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Oh yes! I was in my club.