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Women have had their own Bridge World Championship since 1970, with the trophy named after its first venue. Name the trophy.
Scroll down to find out. |
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Replay At Home
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Replay Boards at Home Video |
You can replay the boards you've played at the club - in the comfort of your own home.
Replay the exact same hands with any of several commercial bridge programs such as GIB or Bridge Baron if you own one. If you have not purchased one, we have a free program for you to download.
Watch the video above or click here for further instructions. |
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Print at Home
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Print Hand Records Video |
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Download and print hand records from any game played at Bridge Ace.
Watch the video above or click here for further instructions. |
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Free Bridge Lessons
Rich answers your questions every Tuesday prior to the game. |
Thursdays, we have a vugraph presentation. Rich reviews interesting deals of the past week. Each board in question is projected onto our large video screen for all to see as we discuss it.
We also have many other free bridge lessons online at our website which you can find here. |
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Since St. Demetrios is rented out so often on Saturdays, we now hold Saturday games at Billy Rose's bar, Jester's. It is located at:
801 E. Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33334 |
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Trivia Answer:
The Venice Cup
The first women's World Championship was held in Venice in 1970, and won by the USA. It is held every two years, in parallel to the Open World Teams Championship, the Bermuda Bowl. The most recent Venice Cup was held in São Paulo, Brazil in 2009, the winners were China.
The 40th rendition will be held October 15-28, 2011 in Veldhoven, Netherlands. |
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Greetings!
Continuing our series of famous bridge deals ... On August 4th, 1956, Italy defeated France to become Champions of Europe, marking the birth of the legendary Blue Team, which was to give Italy a matchless series of successes in world competition spanning twenty years. The six players at the time were Walter Avarelli, Giorgio Belladonna, Eugenio Chiaradia, Massimo d'Alelio, Pietro Forquet and Guglielmo Siniscalco; several of them were to remain key members of the Squadra Azzurra for the next quarter-century. The French team, too, included players who were household names for the next twenty years or so: Henri Svarc, Pierre Jais, Roger Trezel and Pierre Ghestem. On a side note, this was the first tournament where penalties were introduced for slow play.
The format used for the 1956 championship was a simple one: a round robin. There were no playoffs. When Italy met France in the last round of the event, they had twelve wins and two defeats. France, still undefeated, had conceded four draws. Another draw would give Italy the title.
At half time, Italy led by 7 points. This dramatic deal introduced the second half of the match: 
(continued below) |
 New Addition to Website |
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As in any sport, bridge has its share of heroes. Those who enter the Hall of Fame have helped make the game what it is today.
Hall of Fame History
The Hall of Fame was started by the Bridge World magazine in 1964 with founding members Ely Culbertson, Charles Goren, Harold Vanderbilt, Oswald Jacoby, Milton Work, Sidney Lenz, Waldemar von Zedtwitz, Howard Schenken and Sidney Silodor. Portraits of all members are housed in a gallery at the ACBL.
We have interviews with 15 members of the ACBL Hall of Fame on our website. You can learn much by listening to their wisdom.
Find it here. |
The Daily Deal |
Each day we "seed" one lesson deal somewhere into our otherwise randomly dealt set of boards. The board number is different each day. You never know which board it is.
The daily deal is a free mini-lesson. You can take home a handout of the daily deal every day. We hope you find it educational as well as entertaining. To see past Daily Deals, click here. |
BOLS Bridge Tips |
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Check out our new page of free lessons online.
The BOLS Bridge Tips competition started in 1974, and took place off and on for more than 20 years. During that time, virtually all the world's greatest bridge players and writers contributed their ideas to the series.
Not sure what to lead? Can't decide the right bid? Want to make more contracts? Get pointers from the all-time greatest names in bridge -Reese, Rodwell, Zia, Flint, Goren, Hamman, Wolff, Schenken, Garozzo, Belladonna, Chagas and many more - they're all represented. All the advice is here in a perfect potpourri for players of every standard.
These tips are terrific. You can find them here. |
The Blue Team (continued) |
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In the Open Room North passed as dealer and France bid a making six spades. This certainly looked like a good result: seven spades would have been an excellent contract, but it would have gone down with the bad trump break. However, the French pair could not have expected their score to be quite as good as it turned out to be.
This is how the editor of the Daily Bulletin described events at the other table:
'When South doubled the bid of seven spades it gave East a chance to guess the position of the trumps. However, West retreated and when the French made six tricks in hearts to collect a penalty of 1100 I thought the Italians would collapse and there were still thirteen boards to play. Here Forquet did himself honor; he did not say a word, but continued to play calmly for the rest of the match. This excellent test of character allowed Siniscalco to recover his equanimity.'
What should one make of South's double of seven spades? Did he need the extra fifty points?
Italy went on to draw the match 42-42 and take the title. In the next 23 years, the Blue Team and its successors would be gold or silver medalists in Europe in every year but two, collecting an incredible sixteen world titles (only losing the world championship final three times). It is a record unlikely ever to be matched. |
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As always, you can follow the bidding and play of our Deal of the Week on our website, here. |
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We send out the Deal of the Week newsletter every week. You can view many of our past newsletters here. |
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