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 national teams) and the World Senior Pairs championship.

He won the European teams championship on four occasions as part of the British team.

Schapiro was born in Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) into a prosperous family of Jewish traders.

They emigrated at the time of the Russian Revolution, when he was eight years old, and soon settled in England.

He was educated at Clifton College and Bradford Technical College in England and at various universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris.

After graduating, Schapiro joined the family horse trading and meat business and worked there until his forties, when he retired to capitalise on his love of gambling by becoming the banker of a baccarat syndicate at Crockford's gaming club in London.

He was fluent in Russian, German and French, and used those linguistic skills in the Army Intelligence Corps during World War II.

His first major tournament was in 1929, when he went to the US 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, where Schapiro's first recorded victory was in the World Pairs Championship of 1932, also with Jacoby.

In 1935, while he was working in Hamburg, his fluency in German led to his being chosen as the interpreter for Viscount Castlerosse when the latter travelled to Berlin to research an article for the Daily Express.

In a restaurant, a group of Brownshirts mistook Castlerosse for a Jew and Schapiro for a non-Jew, and abused Castlerosse for drinking with an Aryan.

A fight broke out, and as a result Schapiro spent two nights in prison, after which he hastily returned to Britain.

Schapiro had an early marriage to a Russian woman.

His partnership with Terence Reese, which started in about 1944, 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.

Schapiro's bidding in competitive situations was quite outstanding, and his commentary was featured in bridge magazine bidding competitions round the world.

Bidding judgement and card-play in defence were the strengths of his game, relative to other experts.

Schapiro won many tournaments.

His first major win at was Britain's Gold Cup in 1945/46, partnered by Iain Macleod.

Britain won the world championship for teams in 1955 with Reese and Schapiro, Konstam and Dodds, Meredith and Pavlides, beating the US in the final.

It is the only Bermuda Bowl win for a British team.

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

(This was before the foundation of the World Bridge Federation, 1957, which has sanctioned all "World" tournaments for many years.)

Schapiro's entry into serious competitive bridge in Britain was delayed until the end of the war.

He was second in the inaugural renditions of both quadrennial open world championship tournaments under the WBF, the World Team Olympiad of 1960 and the World Open Pairs of 1962.

Schapiro also won the World Mixed Teams in 1962.

He also represented Britain in the 1964 Olympiad and the Bermuda Bowl of the same year, which was played early in 1965, and in ten European Bridge League national teams championships, winning in 1948, 1949, 1954 and 1963.

In the 1965 Buenos Aires Bermuda Bowl, B. Jay Becker noticed Schapiro and his partner, Terence Reese, holding their cards in unusual ways during bidding, the number of fingers showing indicating length of the heart suit.

A number of players and observers, including Dorothy Hayden, New York Times columnists Alan Truscott, John Gerber, British nonplaying captain Ralph Swimer, British Bridge League Chairman Geoffrey Butler, ACBL president emeritus Waldemar von Zedtwitz, and ACBL President Robin McNabb, all watched Reese and Schapiro and were convinced that they were signalling illegally.

It was also confirmed that Reese was not using such signals while playing with his other partner, Jeremy Flint.

At a hearing held at the tournament site in Buenos Aires, the World Bridge Federation (WBF) judged Reese and Schapiro guilty of cheating, and announced that due to "certain irregularities", the British team was forfeiting the matches they had already won against North America and Argentina, and that Reese and Schapiro would not be playing in the remaining matches.

The British Bridge League (BBL) subsequently convened their own enquiry, chaired by Sir John Foster, barrister and Member of Parliament, and General Lord Bourne.

After hearing lasting many months, including a surprise revelation by Swimer that Schapiro had confessed his guilt to him, the "Foster Enquiry" found insufficient evidence to find Reese and Schapiro guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Without rebutting the "direct" evidence that grips were correlated with heart count, the report emphasized that there was inconclusive evidence that the players had benefitted from the signals in their bidding or play.

In 1967, the BBL asked the WBF to reverse their guilty finding; the WBF responded by unanimously reaffirming their guilty verdict, and later reiterating that they would not accept a British team including Reese and Schapiro for the 1968 Olympiad, which the BBL boycotted in protest.

He later married a second time, to Helen, in 1970.

At age ten in England, Schapiro started playing bridge for money at school.

He won the Gold Cup eleven times in all, at the time 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.

At the age of 89 in 1998, he won the World Senior Pairs partnered by Irving Gordon.