CHEATING AT WORLD BRIDGE
New York Times 60s Exposé Vindicated after 40 Years
from David Rex-Taylor
The nineteen fifty-five world bridge champion, Englishman Terence Reese, was a genius player and author. Forty years ago news media worldwide broke the biggest bridge story of the 20th century, alleging that he and his partner, fellow-champion Boris Schapiro, had been observed cheating in a major international event in Buenos Aires. Official hearings in the USA and UK reached opposite conclusions as to guilt. Both Reese and New York Times correspondent Alan Truscott wrote books each convincingly presenting opposing cases. Controversy has raged inconclusively since then.
Over 30 years ago, Reese privately explained to me what had really happened after I solemnly promised I would reveal nothing whatever to anyone until after both his and Boris’ deaths and then only after 40 years from the time of the allegations in 1965. I have kept that promise.
Firstly, to clarify my involvement with Reese that has finally brought me to this point. After the general horror and fallout from what had happened, Reese chose not to be seen for many months, and I, like many others, was concerned. As organiser of the Richmond Bridge Congress, a popular annual event, I decided to tempt him back to competitive bridge by including a special ‘Little Major’ session to give players a unique opportunity to use Reese’s new artificial bidding system (of which the ‘establishment’ utterly disapproved). After days of consideration he agreed to compete.
After months of bidding practice with my partner, 48 hours before the event Reese phoned me to confirm his attendance, adding that he was looking forward to “our playing together.” I was surprised, as it had not occurred to me to ask, or that he would have even considered playing with me. I said there had been a misunderstanding, which he immediately accepted. Seeking a partner (Jeremy Flint declined as he was abroad), Reese finally persuaded a reluctant Jack Albuquerque, a London rubber bridge player, who had but a few hours to study the complexities of the Little Major from scratch! GCH Fox reported the result in The Daily Telegraph: 1 T Burger/D Rex-Taylor; 2 JT Reese…! For me it was an unwelcome Pyrrhic victory. At his suggestion, I partnered Reese in another of the congress events, and when I misdefended, he remarked, “Partner, you really butchered that one!”
Following the congress, we stayed in touch. I published (imprint Bibliagora) titles by Victor Mollo, Rhoda Lederer, Maurice Harrison-Gray, Reese and Flint, and reprinted the rare first bridge book “Biritch,” and was IBPA executive editor from 1982 to 2001, when sudden serious illness forced immediate retirement. Although I am Russian-speaking and enjoyed chatting with Mollo and Schapiro, I was never in an appropriate situation to discuss the cheating allegations with Boris. Equally, I had never planned to raise the subject with Terence, and it was several years before the alleged cheating surfaced in conversation. I had managed to insert the remark that Schapiro had said, at the time, words to the effect of, “That wicked man made me do it.” A long, uneasy, painful silence followed. Then, following my agreement with his strict confidentiality and 40-year embargo insistence, he said, “Hardly fair comment by Boris, wickedness didn’t come into it.”
Now taking notes, I was further startled by his measured insistence that I was to understand that the versions of events in his and Alan Truscott’s books were “by no means mutually exclusive, but rather jointly conclusive,” adding that, “motives aside, both were, for practical purposes, collectively exhaustive.” He went on to confide that in the sixties he had been planning to write a highly-researched, in-depth book on cheating at cards and other indoor games and activities, commenting that he despised cheats, that success and winning solely on merit was cardinal, and that cheats in any activity should be pilloried and their methods exposed. He had discussed the material with Boris but had planned sole authorship. He felt that the book would have done very well, and was to have been first published in the United States, possibly with the title, “Grand Theft – Cheating.” I recently learned that in the 50s, Reese made two BBC radio broadcasts on cheating. He persuaded a reluctant Boris Schapiro that, as world champions, it would be quite unthinkable that they would cheat, that no one would even be paying attention to such an idea, and that in any event, absolutely no signalled information would be used in any way whatsoever during their actual play.
Consequently, as this was merely a purposeful security exercise, they would definitely not be cheating – it would simply be a constructive illusion, establishing a crucial point about a despicable practice. Certainly, he said, a competitive advantage could be obtained by finger-signalling heart holdings whilst holding one’s cards. Their exercise had the single positive aim conclusively to establish in a ‘live’ situation that cheating could be practised undetected, such research establishing that urgent remedial action was needed.
A reluctant Boris finally agreed, strictly on the understanding, firstly, that the whole exercise be revealed in full detail in the book on cheating, with analyses to prove that they had both acted honourably throughout the play of the hands, as if they indeed had no prior knowledge of the heart distribution, so confirming their ‘worthy innocent objective,’ and secondly, that publication should be a matter of priority. Reese’s brainwave was atypically a disastrous miscalculation. Although judged not guilty in the UK at a hearing widely considered to be flawed by blatant cherry-picking of both evidence and witnesses, elsewhere the pair were deemed proven guilty. Security was, of course, duly increased, but Reese could not reveal the true explanation at the time as the very objective of his extraordinary operation – effectively an author’s failed publicity stunt – had so spectacularly backfired in abject failure. Pleading anything but innocence was therefore not an option for either player.
Instead of the cheating book, Reese said that he and Flint would write a soft-porn novel, “Trick Thirteen,” based on cheating, real-life antics off the bridge table in hotel bedrooms at international bridge tournaments.
As requested by Reese, I published the paperback edition. Sales were insignificant and as the publisher I arranged for all unsold copies of both hardcover and paperbacks to be destroyed.
So, as requested, after forty years, I have provided a mouthpiece in order for Terence Reese to explain hese exceptional matters to the world from beyond the grave. He was unrepentant.
Denne artikel er hentet i IBPA, og må gerne kommenteres.
Mvh
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CHEATING AT WORLD BRIDGE - Peter Teisen - 02-06-2005 22:22:15