On 18th March I have received from The Bridge World (TBW) the news that they have ceased to edit the printed magazine; now, it is only online. I was a subscriber since thirty years or little less.
The Bridge World was the last important printed magazine, and now it has bowed to the same destiny of the English Bridge Magazine, founded in 1926 by A. E. Manning Foster, extinct in the late 2010s, and the English and Italian federal magazines, and several others; but The Bridge World was the finest and the most important. It will reappear online, but I have to stay already too much at the computer; anyway, to read – and to write – on paper requires more time, but it is easier and more creative.
The Bridge World was founded in October 1929, by Ely Culbertson, in the same weeks among two other important events in the world of bridge: the publication of the Culbertson’s Blue Book on bridge bidding, and the transatlantic match England – USA, in which the same Culbertson and his wife Josephine, playing their Approach Forcing system, were defeated in England. But soon their system had to become the world standard; the Blue Book would have sold more than the Bible. The Neapolitan Club, that is the manifold world champion Italian System of Eugenio Chiaradia, was an improved Approach Forcing.
The theoretical news were in the DNA of the Bridge World. Two examples:
– The Stayman 2C convention over 1NT opening, asking for major suits. It was an invention of the English Ewart Kempson, perfected by Samuel Stayman in the Forties (Kempson was also director of the above quoted Bridge Magazine)
– In the same years, the American Alvin Roth published two pillars of the modern bridge: the Five Card Major opening bid, 5CM, and the 2/1 response that promises rebid.
Honesty also asks to report a failure. In 1932, one Easley Blackwood wrote to The Bridge World explaining his idea: 4NT no longer natural, showing strength an slam interest, but conventional ace asking. The publication was rejected because then the magazine didn’t publish techniques not used in the Approach Forcing. Besides, noted the director, the 4NT ace asking is useless, looking for a small slam, when the player has two losers in a suit.
In the same year, 1932, it started an important survey: the Master Solver Club, still running. A ten world class players and expert in bidding technique had to decide how to continue at a critical point of the auction. Today, with the 5CM, the opening bid and the first response are almost always obvious; doubts could only arise after the second round or in contested auction; bidding Approach Forcing, instead.
Dealer, you hold: ♠Axxx ♥QJxx ♦xxx ♣Kx
Bidding 5CM of today, open 1♦ or 1♣, depending your agreements, and that’s all. Bidding the Approach Forcing of The Bridge World, instead, you can bid a four card major, and not only: you’re also free to bid two four card suits! Like in democracy, however, the freedom sometimes begets the doubt. Here, if the opening bid were 1♥, after the response 2♣, the opener has not a good rebid, being 2♠ strong and 2NT unacceptable (at that time), because the unguarded diamonds; on the other side, opening spades and rebidding hearts leaves in doubt about the longer suit, if any.
Still in the thirties, and still running, the first article after the index became dedicated to the ethics. The Bridge World magazine not only wanted we becoming strong, but first and foremost honest.
Paolo Enrico Garrisi
