Print Friendly and PDF


The Bermuda Bowl world championship was held in 1965 in Buenos Aires, site of the infamous finger-signaling scandal. British experts Terence Reese and Boris Schapiro were accused by American players B. Jay Becker and Dorothy Hayden (now Truscott) of holding their cards with different numbers of fingers in accordance with the number of hearts they held. When the allegations leaked out during the event, British captain Ralph Swimer forfeited all his team's matches and withdrew Great Britain from the competition. The degree of correlation between fingers and hearts was very high; however, it is debatable whether or not Reese-Schapiro benefited from the alleged exchange of information. Those who sided with the players argued the latter, suggesting that it was improbable the British pair was cheating if it never gained points on the deals in question.

The British Bridge League eventually found Reese and Schapiro innocent of cheating; however, the World Bridge Federation found them guilty and banned them from WBF events for three years. Bridge writer Alan Truscott wrote a book about the affair entitled The Great Bridge Scandal, while Terence Reese wrote his own account, Story of an Accusation.

See also

  • The Bermuda Incident
    The Bermuda Incident was a bridge scandal at the 1975 Bermuda Bowl championship. There, the American team accused the Italian team of cheating.

  • The Fisher Schwartz Scandal
    The Fisher Schwartz scandal occurred at the 2015 Spingold Team Knockouts when Lotan Fisher and Ron Schwartz were accused of cheating.

  • The Houston Affair
    The Houston Affair was a bridge scandal involving American players Larry Cohen and Richard Katz.