The 53rd European Teams Championship started last week in Budapest, 37 countries competing in an 11-day complete round robin. The Open Teams kicked off the event slightly earlier than the Women’s and Senior’s, and England has excellent chances of medals in all three categories. The teams are competing for two different prizes: the first to
Many top-class bridge players enjoy flirting with poker, making it their bit on the side. I can certainly see the attraction. No partner shaking their head. No misunderstandings in the bidding. And no teammates rolling their eyes when you bring back a lousy result. We all know that bluffing is an essential part of poker
If you live in (or anywhere near) London, and you enjoy a good teams tournament, you could do no better than joining one of the excellent SuperLeague games at Young Chelsea or TGRs. There are two divisions in each, played on alternate weeks and two teams get promoted from Div 2 and two go down
It’s the beginning of May and I have a feeling I am about to write the same opening sentence as I have for the past eight years: the Schapiro Spring Foursomes is undoubtedly the best teams tournament in England. Held in Stratford, it’s a double knockout format and this year it was won by Alexander
The day before the London Marathon, Young Chelsea BC held its spring half-marathon. Eighty-seven boards were played over 12 hours (it used to be a full 24 hours), the scoring was IMPs and 30 pairs took part. It was won by Colin Simpson and David Kendrick, two extremely good players with donkey’s years experience behind
Can there be a game more humiliating than Bridge? Last weekend the boys and I went to Warsaw to play the marvellous Palace Cup. I was bursting with excitement as I was playing with my number one Bridge God Geir Helgemo. Lest anyone should think that Helgy woke up one morning and said, ‘I know
Tom Townsend, my esteemed teammate and the Telegraph’s bridge correspondent, did the double last weekend at the London Easter Festival of Bridge. First he won the Championship Pairs playing with Mark Teltscher and then he won the teams playing with … me! Well — on my team anyway. Tom and Mark have had considerable success
The past couple of weeks have been the first since the New Year that we haven’t played a tournament of some international prestige, so I am going to go back to the Lederer weekend at the end of February, London’s premier invitational event. It was held at the extremely elegant RAC Club in Pall Mall,
So many tournaments — so little space. Last week saw two of the very best London has to offer: Terry Hewett’s ninth and final Night of the Stars, a charity event that auctioned off 56 ‘Stars’ to club players for a night of fun, excitement and glamour — and all at the bridge table. The
Pierre Zimmermann, Monaco’s uber-sponsor, has put another unmissable, thrilling tournament in the calendar. The first European Winter Games gave those who entered the kind of event we no longer get with the World or European Championships. One week of bridge, 60 boards a day, with a BAM (board a match) side event that was terrific.
The Brits have done brilliantly in Icelandair’s annual bridge festival in Reykjavik and this year was no different. The winners of the two-day pairs tournament were the Anglo–Bulgarian partnership of Rumen Trendafilov, who has played many times on the Bulgarian Open team, and Nevena Senior, who has won two World Championships (among many other titles)
The New Year got off to a great start with TGR’s annual auction pairs, the best run tournament I have ever played and one of the most fun. It’s matchpoint scoring, meaning every trick makes a difference — certainly not my forte as the pained face of my partner made clear every time I sloshed
Call me nuts but on 29 December I left lovely, sunny, delicious France for the fairly unlovely Royal National Hotel to play the year end’s last event, the one-day Swiss Teams. God it was fun. I hadn’t played a hand in 12 days (and counting) and we were all in a great mood (unusual), rested
2015 leaves many bridge players with mixed emotions. I have played in more wonderful, high-level tournaments than ever before (Iceland, Vilnius, Cavendish Monaco and Lederer to name four) but all of them were overshadowed this August by the greatest cheating scandal in bridge history. Four world-class pairs were outed and banned awaiting trial, three of
Last weekend saw the qualifying matches for the Tollemache Cup, the inter-county championships for teams of eight. I didn’t play because …well, because I wasn’t asked. But I’m not bitter — not so you would notice anyhow. Two members of my team, Nick Sandqvist and Tom Townsend, played for London and squeaked into February’s final
The EBU’s Premier League takes place over three weekends and decides who will represent England in next year’s Camrose (home nations) Trophy. My team were leading after both the first and second weekends and I was all geared up for the coveted England shirt that says you are a bridge god and play for your
If you like extremely high-level Pairs tournaments you would love Pierre Zimmermann’s Cavendish Monaco. Sixty pairs are auctioned off and battle it out over three days against some of the best players in the world. The scoring is IMPs across the field and competition is fierce. The winners this year were Ireland’s Adam Mesbur and
Two weeks playing the Bermuda Bowl (world championships) in Chennai ended heartbreakingly for England’s awesome Open Team and their loyal supporters, who watched every board they could on BBO. They had qualified easily to the play-offs and drew USA 1 (the favourites for the gold medal) in the quarter final. After a thrilling match, England
The 42nd Bermuda Bowl has kicked off in Chennai, and after several weeks of cheat-busting Boye Brogeland (‘The Sheriff’) has kept his promise to give us a clean World Championship. Four European teams qualified with cheats — oh sorry, Mr Smirnov; ‘ethical violations’ on your part — and were replaced by squads from France, Denmark
The cheating scandal rages on. The latest to be accused is the world’s number one-ranked pair, Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes, who play for the mighty Monaco team. Frankly, it’s too depressing to go into and instead I am going to tell you about a local hero called Alan Woo, who has been playing bridge
