John Terence Reese was a British

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 bridge

Contract bridge

Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...

 player and writer, regarded as one of the finest of all time in both fields. He was born in Epsom

Epsom

Epsom is a town in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, England. Small parts of Epsom are in the Borough of Reigate and Banstead. The town is located south-south-west of Charing Cross, within the Greater London Urban Area. The town lies on the chalk downland of Epsom Downs.-History:Epsom lies...

, Surrey, England to middle-class parents, and was educated at Bradfield College

Bradfield College

Bradfield College is a coeducational independent school located in the small village of Bradfield in the English county of Berkshire.The college was founded in 1850 by Thomas Stevens, Rector and Lord of the Manor of Bradfield...

 and New College, Oxford

New College, Oxford

New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

, where he studied classics and took a double first, graduating in 1935.

Life

His father, the son of a Welsh clergyman, worked in a bank until he transferred to his wife's family catering business. Reese said "I played card games before I could read". As a small boy, when his mother "issued the standard warning about not talking to strange men, my father remarked that it was the strange men who should be warned against trying to talk to me".

His mother Anne ran a hotel near Guildford

Guildford

Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...

, and with it a bridge club, so Reese played in the earliest duplicate matches, around 1930. Whilst at Oxford he met some serious bridge players, amongst whom were Lt.-Col. Walter Buller

Walter Buller (bridge)

Lt. Col. Walter Buller , auction and contract bridge organiser, writer and player, was the leading British bridge personality at the start of the 1930s.- Life :...

, Iain Macleod

Iain Macleod

Iain Norman Macleod was a British Conservative Party politician and government minister.-Early life:...

 and Maurice Harrison-Gray

Maurice Harrison-Gray

Maurice Harrison-Gray , known always as 'Gray', was an English professional contract bridge player. For about thirty years from the mid-thirties to the mid sixties he was one of the top players, and won the European Championship four times - in 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1963.- Life :Gray was the child...

, the strongest player in the country at that time. Within a year of graduating and after a brief stint at Harrod's, Reese started working for Hubert Phillips

Hubert Phillips

Hubert Phillips was an economist, puzzleist, bridge player and organiser, journalist, broadcaster, and an author who wrote some 70 books.- Life :...

' magazine and co-authored his first book with him in 1937. Phillips acknowledges that although the book is published jointly under their names, "Terence is the real author of the book", receiving only assistance in planning contents and editing from Phillips. From that point on, Reese's profession was that of a champion contract bridge player and prolific writer on the game.

Reese joined the ARP

Air Raid Precautions

Air Raid Precautions was an organisation in the United Kingdom set up as an aid in the prelude to the Second World War dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids. It was created in 1924 as a response to the fears about the growing threat from the development of bomber...

 a few months before the war, and was never inducted into the armed forces. He ended up working in the factory of Pedro Juan (a fellow bridge player), which manufactured black-out curtains. When a Ministry of Labour

Ministry of Labour

The Ministry of Labour was a British civil service department established by the New Ministries and Secretaries Act 1916. It was renamed the Employment Department in 1988, and finally abolished in 1995...

 inspector turned up to check on him, a hasty phone-call was needed to get Terence into an office surrounded by ledgers.

Reese had some hobbies; even those he pursued with typical commitment. He was always a cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 and chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 enthusiast. After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he made a book

Mathematics of bookmaking

In betting parlance, making a book is the practice of laying bets on the various possible outcomes of a single event. The term originates from the practice of recording such wagers in a hard-bound ledger and gives the English language the term bookmaker for the person laying the bets and thus...

 on greyhound racing

Greyhound racing

Greyhound racing is the sport of racing greyhounds. The dogs chase a lure on a track until they arrive at the finish line. The one that arrives first is the winner....

; later he became an avid football fan, reputedly supporting Queen's Park Rangers, whose ground was next door to the White City Stadium

White City Stadium

White City Stadium was built in White City, London, for the 1908 Summer Olympics, often seen as the precursor to the modern seater stadium and noted for hosting the finish of the first modern distance marathon. It also hosted speedway and a match at the 1966 World Cup, before the stadium was...

, a home of greyhound racing. He played various other games for money, especially canasta

Canasta

Canasta is a card game of the rummy family of games believed to be a variant of 500 Rum. Although many variations exist for 2, 3, 5 or 6 players, it is most commonly played by four in two partnerships with two standard decks of cards. Players attempt to make melds of 7 cards of the same rank and...

, poker

Poker

Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...

 and backgammon

Backgammon

Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits...

, and wrote books on them.

Reese edited the British Bridge World from 1956 to 1962. He married Alwyn Sherrington in 1970. They resided in London and later in Hove, Sussex where he died of aspirin poisoning at home on January 29, 1996 at the age of 83; an inquest ruled his death accidental.

Career as a player

As a bridge player, Reese won every honour in the game, including the European Championship four times (1948, 1949, 1954, 1963) and the Bermuda Bowl

Bermuda Bowl

The Bermuda Bowl is a trophy awarded to the winners of the Open series in the World Team Championship in contract bridge and is named for the site of the inaugural tournament held in 1950...

 (effectively, the World Team Championship) in 1955. He was also World Par champion in 1961 and was placed second in the World Teams Olympiad in 1960, and the World Open Pairs in 1962. He also represented Britain in the Olympiad 1960 and the Bermuda Bowl 1965, and in five other European Championships. He won the Gold Cup

Gold Cup (bridge)

The Gold Cup is the premier open Britishcontract bridge competition for teams of four. It was first contested in the 1931/32 season, making it one of the oldest contract bridge tournaments anywhere...

, the premier British domestic competition, on eight occasions.

Reese last participated in international bridge in the 5th World Team Olympiad in Monte Carlo in 1976 placing third and was Britain's non-playing captain in the 35th European Team Championships held in Birmingham, England in 1981 placing second. Preferring backgammon

Backgammon

Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits...

 as an alternative in his later years, Reese played little competitive bridge, owing in part to increasing deafness. However, his career as a bridge writer continued unabated.

The Little Major

The concept for "the Little Major was born" in late 1962, while Reese was enroute to a tournament in the Canary Islands with Boris Schapiro

Boris Schapiro

Boris Schapiro 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 and the World Senior Pairs championship...

.

First with Schapiro and then Jeremy Flint

Jeremy Flint

Jeremy Flint , an English bridge player, author and horse racing enthusiast, was one of the world's leading professional players.- Life & bridge career :...

, Reese initially created the Little Major bidding system as a warning of what would happen if the development of artificial bidding systems was allowed to go unchecked. However, under this camouflage, the system was a genuine attempt with interesting features. Ultimately, the system was abandoned when its two-year EBU

English Bridge Union

The English Bridge Union or EBU is a player-funded organisation that promotes and organises the card game of duplicate bridge in England. It has an office in Aylesbury with a staff of more than twenty people...

 'A' license was withdrawn "on the grounds that not enough players were playing the system".

Opinions of Reese

Reese's long-time partner, Boris Schapiro, put his opinion in a bridge magazine article:

"Terence Reese: brilliant, tenacious and imaginative; any amount of courage, very good bidder, immaculate dummy player and defender, never puts pressure on partner. Concentration first class; difficult to play against."

Eleven years later, Schapiro still thought Reese was the best player in the country:

"Reese is still the best, and in my opinion by a greater margin than before. His dummy and defence are as immaculate as ever, and the old gentleman has actually polished up his bidding. Believe it or not, he has condescended to play 'fourth suit forcing' and Stayman, and I strongly suspect that by 1973 he will be giving the Baron system a close look."

Upon Reese's death, Schapiro wrote:

"...Terence was the best player, one of only two geniuses I have known. The other was Lasker

Emanuel Lasker

Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...

, the chess player. Terence was not a slow player but occasionally he went into a trance. I didn't mind and could sit there and wait. I knew that when he eventually played a card it would be the right one."

Victor Mollo had this to say about Reese in 1967:

Terence Reese is, perhaps, the best bridge player in the world. Cold, aloof, dispassionate, he has many admirers... and a host of enemies. Intelligence of a high order... the impression of a one-sided but very unusual personality.

Alan Truscott

Alan Truscott

Alan Fraser Truscott was a bridge player, author and columnist. He wrote the daily bridge column for The New York Times for 41 years, from 1964 to 2005 and served as Executive Editor for all six editions of The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 1964 to 2002.- Britain :Truscott was born in Brixton,...

 in a New York Times article February 12, 1996, two weeks after Reese's death:

"Reese was even more famous as a newspaper columnist, a theorist and a writer. Two of his early books, "Reese on Play" and "The Expert Game," were classics, and are still read by every serious student of bridge."

The Buenos Aires affair

Reese's 1965 appearance in the Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

 Bermuda Bowl was marred by an accusation that he and his partner Boris Schapiro

Boris Schapiro

Boris Schapiro 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 and the World Senior Pairs championship...

 were communicating illegally (i.e. cheating). At a hearing held at the tournament site in Buenos Aires, the World Bridge Federation

World Bridge Federation

The World Bridge Federation is the world governing body of contract bridge. The WBF is responsible for world championship competition, most of which is conducted at a few multi-event meets on a four-year cycle...

 (WBF) judged Reese and Schapiro guilty of transmitting finger signals to each other indicating how many hearts each held. The WBF banned them from the remainder of the Bermuda Bowl

Bermuda Bowl

The Bermuda Bowl is a trophy awarded to the winners of the Open series in the World Team Championship in contract bridge and is named for the site of the inaugural tournament held in 1950...

 and ordered the forfeit of all matches in which they had participated up to that point; further punishment was left uncertain at that time.

An important factor in the Buenos Aires procedure was that the pair had not been given an adequate opportunity to defend themselves. The British team captain had agreed with the accusation before discussing the matter with the players. The British Bridge League subsequently convened their own enquiry into the matter in a manner which did allow the players to defend themselves.

After many months, and taking testimony from a number of eyewitnesses, bridge analysts, and character witnesses, the "Foster Enquiry", as it was called, 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 was good or poor for his bid would be almost certain to bring good dividends.

In his 1966 book, Story of an Accusation, Reese went through every single hand presented by the 'prosecution' and showing that the bidding was clear by the principles of the Acol system they were using, and several occasions when they might have used information about the heart suit had it been available. Truscott

Alan Truscott

Alan Fraser Truscott was a bridge player, author and columnist. He wrote the daily bridge column for The New York Times for 41 years, from 1964 to 2005 and served as Executive Editor for all six editions of The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 1964 to 2002.- Britain :Truscott was born in Brixton,...

 also wrote his account, The Great Bridge Scandal, concentrating on the observations and reaching the opposite conclusion.

Neither side changed their opinions, and a considerable rift developed in the bridge world. The official World Bridge Federation position maintains the 1965 finding of guilty but after representations from the British Bridge League and others, the WBF announced in 1968 "that the suspension was over, Reese and Schapiro would be allowed to play, but not together" in the world championships.

There were other cases of accusations at the highest level, in one of which members of the famous Italian Blue Team were accused, again by members of the American team. The solution to this unsatisfactory situation came at last with introduction of bidding boxes and the system of movable compartments ('screens')

Screen (bridge)

The screen is a device used in some tournaments in duplicate bridge that visually separates partners at the table from each other, in order to reduce the exchange of unauthorized information. It is a panel made of plywood, spanned canvas or similar material, which is placed vertically, diagonally...

 which prevent players from seeing their own partners during bidding (a system only used at tournaments of the highest rank).

Flint's account

One other member of the British team, Reese's then main partner Jeremy Flint

Jeremy Flint

Jeremy Flint , an English bridge player, author and horse racing enthusiast, was one of the world's leading professional players.- Life & bridge career :...

, gave a lengthy account of the accusation. Flint starts by mentioning some facts that were known at the time, but may be forgotten now. The results of the BBL trials was: 1 Reese—Flint; 2 Konstam

Kenneth Konstam

Kenneth W. Konstam , often known as 'Konnie', was an English international bridge player, and in 1955 was one of the only British team to win the Bermuda Bowl. He won more European Open teams championships than any other British player.Konstam, educated at Oundle School, was employed for a time in...

—Schapiro; 3 Albert Rose—Ralph Swimer

Ralph Swimer

Ralph Swimer was an international bridge player who was best known for being the nonplaying captain of the British team at the 1965 Bermuda Bowl in Buenos Aires, during which there was a great deal of controversy surrounding the British team due to allegations of cheating.An obituary on him was...

. The BBL then announced the team, omitting Swimer and substituting Maurice Harrison-Gray

Maurice Harrison-Gray

Maurice Harrison-Gray , known always as 'Gray', was an English professional contract bridge player. For about thirty years from the mid-thirties to the mid sixties he was one of the top players, and won the European Championship four times - in 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1963.- Life :Gray was the child...

. Gray was still a great player, but it was no surprise that controversy followed. Eventually, Swimer had to be content with being non-playing captain. In addition, Reese and Schapiro were hardly on speaking terms at the time; Reese's decision to form a partnership with Flint had been decided in 1962, and the pair co-operated to develop the Little Major bidding system.

Flint makes two main points (over and above points made by Reese) as follows:
1. The bitter quarrel between Reese and Schapiro "was surely not the perfect background for alleged dishonest complicity".
2. When Flint was playing with Reese in the closed room, Geoffrey Butler (BBL official) and Waldemar von Zedwitz (senior American master) came to watch. After the session Flint said to Reese:

"Terence, you realise we were being watched."

"Good gracious," he replied "Do you think so?"

"I suppose they must be considering banning the Little Major," I ventured.

"Reese is considered a fool by no-one [yet] according to his accusers he continued to exchange signals for the next seven days".

Later accusation and denial

In May 2005, a claim was made by a bridge player and publisher to the effect that Reese had made a confession to him forty years previously. This claim was made public after the deaths of both Reese and Schapiro. There is no corroboration to support this account. In contrast, Shapiro's widow, Helen had stated that "at no point did Boris admit to cheating in Buenos Aires. To the contrary, he said there was never any impropriety."

Career as a bridge author

Reese also had a second career as a bridge author and journalist, a career that lasted throughout his life. He was one of the most influential and acerbic of bridge writers, with a large output (over ninety titles), including several books which remain in print as classics of bridge play. He was also the long-time bridge correspondent of The Lady

The Lady (magazine)

The Lady is Britain's oldest weekly women's magazine. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. It is particularly notable for its classified advertisements for domestic service and child care; it also has extensive listings of holiday properties.The magazine was...

, The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

, the London Evening News

Evening News (London)

Evening News, formerly known as The Evening News, was an evening newspaper published in London from 1881 to 1980, reappearing briefly in 1987. It became highly popular under the control of the Harmsworth brothers. For a long time it maintained the largest daily sale of any evening newspaper in London...

and the Evening Standard

Evening Standard

The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

.

Reese contributed to the Acol

Acol

Acol is the bridge bidding system that, according to The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, is "standard in British tournament play and widely used in other parts of the world". It is named after the Acol Bridge Club, previously located on Acol Road in London NW6, where the system started to evolve...

 bidding system originally developed by Maurice Harrison-Gray

Maurice Harrison-Gray

Maurice Harrison-Gray , known always as 'Gray', was an English professional contract bridge player. For about thirty years from the mid-thirties to the mid sixties he was one of the top players, and won the European Championship four times - in 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1963.- Life :Gray was the child...

, Jack Marx

Jack Marx (bridge)

Jack Marx was a British international bridge player who was instrumental in developing the Acol System of bidding.- Life :Marx went to Repton School, and served as a Captain in World War II in the RASC....

 and S.J.("Skid") Simon in the late 1920s and early 1930s and co-authored the first textbook on it with Ben Cohen in 1938. Named after the Acol Bridge Club in North London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 (located on Acol Road at the time), it became the prevailing bidding system in Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and some other parts of the world. The book and its subsequent editions in 1939, 1946 and 1949 gave a certain unity to what was otherwise a rather free-wheeling bidding system. His later adaptation of Garozzo

Benito Garozzo

Benito Garozzo is one of the most famous bridge players in the history of the game. He has won 13 world championship titles with the Italian Blue Team, playing with Pietro Forquet and later Giorgio Belladonna...

 and Yallouze's book on the Blue Club

Blue Club

Blue Club is a bridge bidding system, developed mainly by Benito Garozzo. It was used by the famous Blue Team and became very popular in the 1960s and has been in decline since.The main features are:...

 and his book on the Precision Club

Precision club

Precision Club is a bidding system in the game of contract bridge. It is a type of strong club system that was invented by C. C. Wei and used to good effect by Taiwan teams in the early 1970s...

 were widely used by devotees of strong club systems, and by their opponents as references.

The great success of Reese on Play (an outstanding text on dummy play and defence) was followed by an even more ambitious work. The Expert Game was the book which really made his name. As the title suggests, it dealt with card play at the highest level, including some ideas that were novel at the time, for instance, inferences from events that did not occur, and the principle of restricted choice

Principle of restricted choice (bridge)

In contract bridge, the principle of restricted choice states that play of a particular card decreases the probability its player holds any equivalent card. For example, South leads a low spade, West plays a low one, North plays the queen, East wins with the king...

. Examples of bridge logic abound in Reese, for instance, a player who overcalls but does not lead his suit is likely to lack one or two key honours; this concept is often called 'the dog that did not bark in the night' (after Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 in Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

's Silver Blaze

Silver Blaze

"Silver Blaze", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was adapted in 1937 to a film starring Arthur Wontner, and an ITV drama starring Christopher Plummer which was...

). Another form of logic can be seen in 'If it must be so, assume it is so'. His examples of counting (and other ways of drawing inferences from the bidding and play) spread such ideas from a coterie of masters in London (or New York) to a much wider group of nascent experts. For at least twenty years after this book was published, one could be sure that virtually every top-class player had studied it minutely.

Reese also had the distinction of creating several new genres of bridge book. The most significant was the 'Over my shoulder' genre, where the reader is taken through the master's thinking as the bidding and play proceeds through the hand. Play Bridge with Reese was the model for several such works. Develop Your Bidding Judgement was another such work.

Later, Reese made use of the growing library of hands from international competitions to create interesting quiz-type books, where the discussion was usually on the verso of the page which presented the problem. Famous Hands from Famous Matches was the first of these, followed by Famous Bidding Decisions and Famous Play Decisions, all written with David Bird

David Bird

David Bird is the world's most prolific bridge writer, with over one hundred books to his name. He is bridge correspondent for the Mail on Sunday and the London Evening Standard; he contributes regularly to many magazines, including Bridge Plus, English Bridge, Bridge Magazine and the ACBL Bridge...

. In his career as a writer, Reese had a number of co-authors, mostly highly competent players and writers, yet all his books were in his inimitable style. Another of his bright ideas was to raid the stock of hands in bridge magazine bidding competitions for interesting and instructive hands. What Would You Bid? was the result.

Reese also wrote books on poker, casino gambling, canasta and backgammon.

External links

• Reese's World Bridge Federation profile

Photographs