The gifted player and writer Terence Reese, who had been caught using elaborate finger signals to show the number of hearts held in the 1965 world championship, pooh-poohed the accusation by saying it would have been easy to cheat using only a simple signal to show minimum-or-maximum for one’s bids.
Lew and Don took Reese’s lame alibi seriously when incoming ACBL President Lou Gurvich appointed them to watch Katz and Cohen, who played behind screens in the January 1977 Houston Trials. Lew, Don and a couple of others listened for audible clues, and hearing frequent coughs and sniffs they concluded (honestly but mistakenly) that coughs meant maximum and sniffs meant minimum.
With only 32 of the 128 deals to go and the “Gerber” team (Katz, Cohen, sponsor George Rosenkranz, Roger Bates, John Mohan) leading by about 45 IMPs, the ACBL brought in its chief counsel, Lee Hazen, who told Katz and Cohen that they’d been caught cheating---and refused Katz’s request to finish the match and hold a prompt hearing.
Roger Stern, a lawyer who captained the opposing team, told Katz upon leaving the room, “It was like a fascist meeting in there.”
When Dick asked, “Can you help us?” Roger kindly struck a deal with Hazen and Gurvich to hush-up the accusation by having Katz and Cohen “resign from the ACBL for personal reasons” and be readmitted to the ACBL quietly within a year.
I sympathize with Lew and Don. Thinking “We caught them red-handed” and feeling Dick and Larry had gotten off too lightly for cheating, they blabbed to the bridge press. Dick and Larry sued Lew, Don and the ACBL for many millions.
That summer another Larry---Larry Weiss, my friend, neighbor and insurance agent, who had the job of official ACBL photographer with expenses-paid trips to national tournaments---approached another Dick---ACBL Secretary Dick Goldberg---to ask, “What does our expert committee think from the hand records that Katz and Cohen were showing with their signals?”
“We have no such committee,” said Dick. When Larry insisted, “We need one,” Dick replied, “I hereby appoint you as the committee.”
Human laziness being what it is, Larry did nothing for a month, then fobbed the examination of the hand records off on “Danny, old buddy, old buddy.” Try as I did, I found no evidence of cheating. Fearful of Mathe’s wrath and wanting to keep his cushy job, Larry said “I don’t know you and you don’t know me” (though privately he remained my friend and my insurance agent until he retired and moved out of town).
I became a pariah to almost all but the six fine members of the opposing team: Bob Hamman and Bobby Wolff, Paul Soloway and John Swanson, Eddie Kantar and Billy Eisenberg. None wanted to discuss the case with me except Bob---who scolded me three years later in his own endearing way---and Bobby who became a dear friend three decades later. Billy was thoughtful enough carry my initial report to the ACBL bigwigs at the Fall Nationals in 1977, hoping the case could be settled then---all to no avail.
After depositions and reports (some shockingly shoddy), lawyers being hired and fired, the case was settled more than five years after the Houston Trials on terms that could have been negotiated before the end of 1977. Many thousands wasted on legal fees (the ACBL paid Katz’s and Cohen’s lawyers) resulting in readmission to the ACBL under a cloud: “You may not play with each other.”
As though cheaters could not find new partners with whom to cheat!
What really happened in Houston? Katz and Cohen played a bizarre “Breakthrough Club” system invented by Robert Sundby, who added their names to the book he wrote in order to drum up sales. None of their six opponents ever said whether they’d read the book---but Mathe and Oakie, whom I respect for their honesty, testified in their depositions to their complete ignorance of Breakthrough.
Contrary to Reese’s dictum, I believe that the simplest and most effective way to cheat is to keep opponents in the dark about one’s bidding agreements. Did Katz and Cohen explain adequately? I don’t know. Eddie, Billy and Bob never told me.
My friend and confidante Diane, who became Billy Eisenberg’s girlfriend and later his wife, offered an account that was never verified. She said that Katz and Cohen had been cheating previously. Katz, a doctor who practiced in Beverly Hills, gave free medical treatment to some Los Angeles experts. One of them, learning in advance of the ACBL’s plans to have Katz and Cohen watched in Houston, warned him. So in Houston it was “Signals Off!”
I remain astounded by the incompetence of ACBL bigwigs, lawyers and expert witnesses, including renowned mathematician Donald Ylvsaker, who made baby mistakes in statistics when hired by the ACBL’s lawyers to prove cheating in the Houston Trials. But I’m ignorant of what happened before Houston.
© Jeff Tang. All Rights Reserved.