[Reproduced with the author’s permission from an original post on Reg Day’s personal website]

My Bridge-Playing Days: A Few Jottings/Memories of My Bridge Experiences

Introduction

At the end of 2003, I started to look at the rec.games.bridge newsgroup, out of a sense of nostalgia. Over 20 years earlier bridge had been a major part of my life. I spotted a link to Bridge Base Online (BBO) and a live vugraph broadcast of the Bermuda Bowl, so visited the website, downloaded the software and watched a magnificent final match. My appetite whetted, I recently started to play a little online bridge at BBO, but the experience was so different that I started to think about how things had once been. Memory clouds with time and after so much time mine is no exception, so recording them now seems worthwhile. I make no apologies if some of the detail is a little hazy!

In the Beginning

It was the end of term at William Ellis grammar school, term end exams had been completed and a replacement teacher gave us free rein to do what we liked, in a free period, as long as we were quiet! Peter Zentler‑Munro and I along with a couple of friends, whose names now escape me, were playing a game of whist when the teacher came by. He asked us why we didn’t play a more challenging game like bridge and aroused our interest, so gave us a quick outline to get us started, quite an achievement in a 40‑minute period. Well, to say the bug bit was putting it mildly, within the week I’d read every book at my local library and the William Ellis bridge club was reborn (it was only some time later that we found out that there had been an old club that died through lack of support a few years earlier). Within the year we had a flourishing club and within four years the bridge club truly blossomed, we’d got to the Daily Mail schools cup finals, had six regular teams in schools leagues (winning a number of divisions) and even had a team accepted into the London League proper. Our first team went unbeaten for almost three years in head‑to‑head teams‑of‑four matches (over 70)—the regular success meant the school eventually awarded colours for bridge alongside the more traditional cricket and rugby which I’d given up.

Young Chelsea Bridge Club

It was in the Daily Mail schools final, playing Neapolitan Club (precursor to Blue Club) with Kevork Hopayian, that I met Peter Donovan, bridge columnist for the Mail and he invited me to go to the Young Chelsea bridge club (YCBC), then in the Eton Place Hotel [Hotel Eden], near Gloucester Road station in London. I still recall the trepidation felt as a schoolboy going down into the smoke-filled basement of strangers, and their alien language and manners. They made me welcome and within weeks I became a regular at the rubber‑bridge tables, although it took a little longer before the better players would partner a “schoolboy” in the pairs events. It was earnings from the rubber tables that supplemented my reduced grant while at Imperial College!

The YCBC moved to Earl’s Court a little way from its current home in Barkston Gardens, the name escapes me but I remember fondly partnerships with Karl Thorsteins, Mahmoud Sadek, Dave Fell and Ray Robinson, and late evenings/early mornings discussing all matters bridge, and a number of long walks across town at 5.00–6.00am to my parents to have a shower and go to work! Annual holiday taken as Fridays/Mondays so I could play in congresses all around the country… happy times, all those hotels, boarding houses, and all that beer! The misfortune of playing in Liverpool the weekend they beat Spurs 7–0 was surpassed by the achievement of Ray Robinson in averaging over 80 mph from Liverpool to central London in the early-hours return trip.

Moving to Southend

My job moving to Southend in 1977 changed everything, and it meant I couldn’t “live” at the YCBC. I tried some of the local bridge clubs but the standard was shocking—comparisons are invidious, as even then the YCBC was probably the strongest club in the country. I remember playing with Joe Amsbury at the Thorpe Bay club, and after getting over the no‑alcohol shock, we proceeded to take liberties all night—the details are lost in the mists of time but I recall opening a ten‑count with a couple of tens and nines with a weak 1NT and Joe with a passed hand raised me to 3NT with ten commenting that he liked his hand, it being rich in sevens and eights! The necessary nine tricks rolled in on a poor lead, some good card placement, non‑optimal defence and a couple of endplays, and opponents were really put out when they saw the traveller was mainly passouts! Needless to say we won the evening but one of their leading lights suggested that we might prefer not to return—didn’t have the heart to tell them that the lack of alcohol had already guaranteed that!

Access Bridge Congresses

It was at this time that I persuaded my company to sponsor a bridge tournament with real prizes—with very few exceptions the normal prizes at tournaments were… well, little better than junk. So I organised the first Access congress in Basildon, and to everyone’s relief, particularly mine, it was a great success. We had some great support from the London directors and support from the YCBC and so it seemed a second one was called for. At that time I was well into computers and having played in a number of “simultaneous” events often wondered why they couldn’t really be simultaneous, so set about having a multiple‑centre event, with new venues in the Midlands and Scotland. To pull this together, we needed a computer bureau (no Internet in those days), and that’s how I first met John Probst then at ADP. The project took some selling to his company and mine, but the ambitious proposal to make this a European event the following year seemed quite attractive to everyone. The coding for the scoring ran into a number of problems so we agreed to restrict the type of movements in use and everything was back on target. We had the local bridge organisations in the Midlands and Scotland provide the directors, and even gave them written instructions. However, on the first day the TD in the Midlands ignored the instructions and used an unsupported movement. When the computer scoring came out there was a lot of excitement—this had never been done before—however, shortly after, lots of queries came in and it became clear that something had gone wrong (the TD didn’t own up and we spent hours checking the computer code—argh!). There was no way to change the computer program, so we had to manually score everything for the three centres—we were up all night and only completed an hour before the next day’s session—but unsurprisingly this was not appreciated by the competitors who were rightly miffed. It came as a real shock to me to be so let down, it wasn’t as if we’d not considered everything, there was even a last‑minute check with each centre to confirm that all the instructions had been carried out… after that the plans for the Europe‑wide congress were scrapped. The irony is that the offending TD was named Pratt… you can think up your own punchline!

Getting to the Camrose Trials

It was dear old Joe Amsbury who introduced me to Richard Fleet, and the last leg of my bridge journey. We formed a team with Richard Granville and Brian Callaghan, and although I don’t recall winning anything we were always there or thereabouts. We spent long sessions working on the “Cambridge Club” systems we played and the long journeys to London to play took quite a toll—four hours of travelling—and my work began to suffer. However, we qualified for the Camrose trials and then for the final weekend. Although, I had one nightmare session (including forgetting a system mod that I’d proposed which would have converted a 13‑IMP loss to a similar sized gain?), with a few rounds to go we were still in contention but the team couldn’t get it all together, and so we missed out. It’d been my ambition from my schooldays to play for England, although I didn’t tell anyone, but, quite frankly, I couldn’t face another year of all that travelling just in the hope, and my work really needed some focus, so shortly thereafter, still in my twenties, I “retired” from the tournament scene.

Other Memories

My favourite memory from those days long ago was partnering Warwick Pitch in the London Congress and despite defending 26 out of 27 hands we came second—I remember actually enjoying defending that day, and that was quite unique as like most bridge player I loved playing the hands. One of my most frustrating was partnering Dave Fell at Easbourne with Bob Rowlands and Derek Rimington and a third pair. As a scratch team we hadn’t expected to reach the final stages so Dave hadn’t booked the Monday off work (I was always more optimistic!). However, we played really well all weekend, absolutely hammering a team containing two of the Italian European champs amongst others and reached the semifinal. With Dave unable to get the day off work I had to sit and watch our teammates narrowly lose in the final session by a single IMP.

After Retirement

After retiring from the tournament scene, I played a little social bridge at work, even paid a couple of visits to the YCBC occasionally over the next few years, but my heart wasn’t in it. Having focused more on my work, I was able to take early retirement in 2002 and now with time on my hands…. There’s no going back to the tournament scene, I’m not prepared to put that much work in as there is no worthwhile goal, so I’ll never again be able to claim to know all the popular systems and conventions. Playing online has proven more difficult than expected, it takes real effort to count and “see” the opponents’ hands whereas it used to be automatic, is that lack of practice or an ageing brain? Communication online is frustrating, as typing is considerably slower and less flexible than speech. But my biggest frustration has been the preponderance of five‑card‑major systems—SAYC, 2/1 etc, and the low number of Acol players (after all those years out I can only reliably remember Acol). The standard of players is very variable, and the standard of those that rate themselves as Advanced or Expert is sometimes quite laughable. However, the biggest plus has been the large majority of very friendly and forgiving players, so, if you’re a bridge player I recommend you visit Bridge Base Online (BBO).

♣ ♦ ♥ ♠

Reproduced from an original last updated 29 July 2007, author Reg Day