|
|
| The Bermuda
Bowl SQueeZe Books, US$20, ISBN 1-58776-102-5 from www.vivisphere.com/squeeze/ The Bermuda Bowl is the World Teams Championship and the competition that everybody wants to win but very few do, and this anthology starts with the first competition played in 1950 and takes us up to the late nineties. Anyone with a passion for any form of human endeavour should be interested in its history, and this book provides a fascinating insight into how things changed so much during the latter part of the 20th Century. In what way change? Well, to start with, the bidding systems used fifty odd years ago were very much of the bow-and-arrow variety, with very little sophistication, with the agreeable result that some of the contracts reached would shame most people today. One famous American pair demanded that their opening bids were 'up to strength', which seems laughable today, and required the same of some of their opposition - I dare say when they were talked out of the par contract by their less inhibited opponents. And psyches were almost mandatory in those far off days, with outrageous 'fielding' by the partner of the perpetrator. I suspect that nowadays such incidents would eventually end up being arbitrated after much delay by Three Wise Men. This book deals in great detail with the dominance of the Italians from 1957 when they won their first championship in New York, until 1976 when they were defeated by the Americans in Monte Carlo. They were a fantastic side but the Italians had their fair share of infamy, with several accusations of cheating being levelled against them over the years. I particularly liked the attempt by one Italian to make their team by stating that he had taped a phone call between two of the then current members detailing how they sent one another smoke signals from the cigarettes they were constantly smoking. Try doing that now! I bet you've forgotten that a British team made the final against North America when the Championships were held in Jamaica in 1987. This hand, taken from the Round Robin against Sweden, was sensational in every way, but to understand the intricacies of the bidding (which the book explains) you must know that Forrester and Armstrong were using Highly Unusual Methods to produce a Highly Unusual Result:
The British bidding showed whatever it showed but the Swedish declarer lost 2800 on the deal together with the match. I love looking into the history of things and this book does it so well. At over 250 pages - and large pages at that - this is great value for money for anyone who nurses the suspicion that if only they had a slightly better partner, they would be featuring themselves in later editions. Dave Huggett | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
© Bridge Plus 1999-2006
|
10 6
7 6 5
A K 7
3
A 7 6
4
