Boris Schapiro

Boris Schapiro (22 August 1909 – 1 December 2002) was a British international bridge player. He was a Grandmaster of the World Bridge Federation, and the only player to have won both the Bermuda Bowl (the world championship for teams) and the World Senior Pairs championship. He won the European teams championship on four occasions as part of the British team.

Life

Schapiro was born in Riga, Latvia (part of Imperial Russia at that time) into a prosperous family of Jewish traders which left at the time of the Russian Revolution when he was eight years old, and soon settled in England.^[1] He was educated at Clifton College and Bradford Technical College ^[2] in England and at various universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris.

After graduating, Boris joined the family horse trading and meat business. He worked there until, in his forties, he decided to retire and capitalise on his love of gambling by becoming the banker of a baccarat syndicate at Crockford's, the gaming club in London. During World War II Schapiro, who was fluent in Russian, German and French, put these linguistic skills to use in the Army Intelligence Corps.

Schapiro had an early marriage to a Russian woman. He later married a second time, to Helen, in 1970.

Bridge career

At ten, Schapiro started playing bridge for money at school. His first major tournament was in 1929, when he went to the USA to partner Oswald Jacoby in the World Auction Bridge Pairs Championship. The two players were destined to have great and lengthy careers in the coming world of contract bridge. Schapiro's first recorded victory at contract bridge was in the World Pairs Championship of 1932, also with Jacoby. This was before the foundation of the present World Bridge Federation.^[3]

Schapiro's entry into serious competitive bridge in Britain was delayed until the end of World War II. His partnership with Terence Reese, which started in 1944,^[4] was the basis of his most outstanding period as a player. He was also successful with other partners, the last of which was Irving 'Haggis' Gordon. His bidding in competitive situations was quite outstanding, and his comments featured in bidding competitions in bridge magazines round the world. Bidding judgement and card-play in defence were the strengths of his game.

"The characters of Reese and Schapiro were very different. At the bridge table Reese was the cold calculating machine, driven by logic, but witty and good-natured away from it, though with an acerbic phrase when needed. Schapiro was the player of flair; excitable, always on the move, irascible at the table and often grumpy away from it. He did not mellow with old age. At the 1999 European Senior Teams, opponents who called the referee in a vain attempt to protect Schapiro's partner from verbal abuse were told there were special dispensations in standards of behaviour for any competitor over the age of 90."^[5]

Major tournament successes

Schapiro won many tournaments. His first major win at teams was Britain's Gold Cup in 1945/46, partnered by Iain Macleod. He won the Gold Cup eleven times in all, a record, and his last win came at the age of 88 in 1997/98, a remarkable 52 years after his first and 33 years after his penultimate success.^[3]

In 1955 Britain, with Reese and Schapiro, Konstam and Dodds, Meredith and Pavlides, won the world championship for teams, beating the USA in the final. It is the only Bermuda Bowl win for a British team.

Schapiro also won the World Mixed Teams in 1962. At the age of 89, he won the World Senior Pairs of 1998, partnered by Irving Gordon. He was second in the World Olympiad of 1960 and the World Open Pairs 1962. He also represented Britain in the World Olympiad 1964 and the Bermuda Bowl of the same year, which was played early in 1965. He played in ten European Championships, winning in 1948, 1949, 1954 and 1963.

Although the British team had won the Bermuda Bowl in 1955, Schapiro's 1965 experience was altogether different.

1965 Bermuda Bowl accusation

Schapiro was accused of cheating in the 1965 Bermuda Bowl in Buenos Aires, sometimes called the "Buenos Aires affair". Allegedly, he and his partner Terence Reese were signaling to each other the length of their heart suits.

American players Dorothy Hayden and B. Jay Becker felt that the British pair were holding their cards with their fingers arranged in unusual ways. They conferred with Alan Truscott, the The New York Times bridge editor, and agreed they would all observe Reese–Schapiro and record how many fingers were visible when each held his cards in each hand. Comparing their notes with the official hand records seemed to show that the numbers of fingers indicated the number of hearts held. One finger visible meant one heart card. Two fingers together meant two hearts, while two fingers spread in a "V" shape meant five; similarly three fingers denoted three or six hearts and four fingers denoted four or seven. No signal for a heart void was suggested.

Several other eyewitnesses including British team captain Ralph Swimer became convinced of the truth of the accusations. Later comparisons with hand records seemed to confirm that the code remained consistent when Reese and Schapiro were partners, but disappeared when they played with other partners. The matter was then reported to World Bridge Federation (WBF) officials for adjudication.

In hearings held immediately, the WBF decided that Reese and Schapiro were guilty, banned them from the remainder of the Bermuda Bowl, and negotiated an agreement with Captain Swimer officially to forfeit all matches previously won during the tournament. The WBF then referred the matter to the British Bridge League (BBL) for further action, if any.

At that time Schapiro averred he would never again compete internationally, but he later played in European and world senior events.

The BBL convened its own enquiry into the matter under the direction of Sir John Foster QC and General Lord Bourne. After many months taking testimony from eyewitnesses, bridge analysts, and character witnesses, the so-called Foster Enquiry concluded that Reese and Schapiro had not been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore acquitted them. Several factors must have played a part in this decision, especially the fact that little or no connection could be made between the claimed signals and the results at the table. Reese and Schapiro had not played especially well in Buenos Aires; Reese commented later that no pair were likely to cheat in a way that did not help them win. A simple system to signal whether a player's cards were good or poor for his bid would be almost certain to yield rich dividends.

In The Story of an Accusation (1966), Reese went through every single hand presented by the 'prosecution'. He argued both that the bidding was clear by the principles of the Acol bidding system they were using and that they might have used information about the heart suit in several ways, had it been available. Truscott also wrote his account, concentrating on the eyewitness observations and reaching the opposite general conclusion. Neither side changed its opinions and a considerable rift developed in the bridge world.

The Buenos Aires affair removed at a stroke the central activity of Schapiro's life. It took years for Boris to be rehabilitated in world bridge, although he was always held in high esteem in Europe. Unlike Reese, he eventually returned to international bridge competition, and did so with considerable success. His 90th birthday party in London was attended by Jaime Ortiz-Patino, the President Emeritus of the WBF and owner of Valderrama Golf Club, who had been a witness for Reese and Schapiro at the BBL enquiry; Omar Sharif, the Egyptian film star and bridge player; Prince Khalid Abudullah of Saudi Arabia, a family friend; and many personalities from the bridge and casino worlds.^[5]

Bridge writing

Schapiro was bridge correspondent of The Sunday Times from 1968 until his death in 2002. Despite his facility with language, Boris was never really interested in writing; his output was two small books, and it is likely that his newspaper column was often ghosted. He made his mark as a player and a personality.

Anecdotes

Schapiro's conversation at the bridge table was both a delight and a nuisance, depending on your point of view.

His standard greeting to females, "What about a spot of adultery?",^[6] is mentioned in every biographical note and obituary, and reveals his sense of humour. When his team played an exhibition match at Leicester, the wife of the Chief Constable organised a cocktail party for the team to meet the locals. The players were invited to sign and comment in the Visitors book, and Schapiro wrote the catchphrase after his signature. Dimmie Fleming defused the situation by signing next, drawing an upwards arrow and writing, "But will he ever be adult?"^[7]

Another reported anecdote had his then partner, Terence Reese, picking up a collection of silver cup trophies from Schapiro's Eaton Place flat in a pillow-case and upon being stopped in the street by a policeman and asked to explain his unusual sack of possessions, Reese led him back to the flat so that Schapiro could validate his explanation. When Schapiro answered the door, he sized up the situation and when asked "Can you identify this man?", said "Never seen him before in my life."^[3]

Further reading

• Reese, Terence (1966): The story of an accusation.
• Truscott, Alan (2004): The Great Bridge Scandal: the most famous cheating case in the history of the game (second edition). Toronto: Master Point Press, ISBN 1-894154-67-3.

References