John Terence Reese (28 August 1913 – 29 January 1996) was a British bridge player and writer, regarded as one of the finest of all time in both fields. He was born in Epsom, Surrey, England to middle-class parents, and was educated at Bradfield College and New College, Oxford, where he studied classics and attained a double first, graduating in 1935.
Life Reese's 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".Reese (1977), p. 1. 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".
Reese's mother Anne ran a hotel near Guildford, and with it a bridge club, so Reese played in the earliest duplicate matches, circa 1930. Whilst at Oxford he met some serious bridge players, amongst whom were Lt.-Col. Walter Buller, Iain Macleod and Maurice Harrison-Gray, 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's magazine and co-wrote his first book with him in 1937.Phillips, Hubert, and Terence Reese (1937). The Elements of Contract. London: British Bridge World. 271 pages. Phillips acknowledges that although the book is published jointly under their names, "Terence is the real author of the book",Phillips and Reese (1937), Introduction by Phillips, p. vii. 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 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 inspector turned up to check on him, a hasty phone-call was needed to get Terence into an office surrounded by ledgers.Reese (1977), p. 27.
Reese had some hobbies; even those he pursued with typical commitment. He was always a cricket and chess enthusiast. After World War II, he made a book on greyhound racing; later he became an avid football fan, reputedly supporting Queen's Park Rangers, whose ground was next door to the White City Stadium, a home of greyhound racing. He played various other games for money, especially canasta, poker and backgammon, and wrote books on them.
From the late 1930s to the mid-1950s, Reese presented a number of BBC radio and television programmes about bridge.Shireen Mohandes, Bridge, May 2016, "On the Air", pp. 36–7. He 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 29 January 1996 at the age of 82. An inquest ruled his death accidental.Bird, David (2004). [Reese entry]. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Volume 46. . Page 333.
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 (effectively, the World Team Championship) in 1955—all as a member of the Great Britain open team. He was World Par champion in 1961 and placed second in both the inaugural World Team Olympiad, 1960, and the inaugural World Open Pairs, 1962. He also represented Britain in the 1965 Bermuda Bowl and in five other European Championships. He won the Gold Cup, the premier British domestic competition, on eight occasions.The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge. Editions 1–4, New York: Crown, 1964–1984. Editions 5–6, Memphis: ACBL, 1994–2001.
Reese last participated in international bridge at the 1976 World Team Olympiad in Monte Carlo, where Great Britain placed third.World Bridge Federation results and participants, 1976. He was Britain's non-playing captain in the 1981 European Team Championships in Birmingham, England,European Bridge League results and participants, 1981. placing second. Thus Great Britain qualified for the 1981 Bermuda Bowl, but the WBF credentials committee rejected Reese as captain, citing "writings and opinions expressed by Mr. Reese that were considered not in the best interests of the game", in the words of New York Times bridge editor Alan Truscott—primarily the "sordid picture of top-level bridge" presented by Reese and Jeremy Flint in their 1979 novel Trick Thirteen.Truscott, Alan (21 September 1981). "Bridge: Ban on Reese Had Roots In His Writings on Game". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-11-12. Britain appealed to the WBF executive council but Reese chose to remain home.Truscott, Alan (18 October 1981). "World Bridge Play Coming to County". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-11-12.
Preferring backgammon as an alternative in his later years, Reese played little competitive bridge, owing in part to increasing deafness.Reese (1977), p. 128. However, his career as a bridge writer continued unabated.
The Little Major
The concept for "the Little Major was born"Reese (1977), p. 112–16. in late 1962, while Reese was en route to a tournament in the Canary Islands with Boris Schapiro.
First with Schapiro and then Jeremy Flint, 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 '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 1951 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."Schapiro, Boris (1951). "Knights of the square table". Contract Bridge Journal. Reprinted in Hasenson (2004), p. 63.
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."Schapiro, Boris (1962). Contract Bridge Journal. Reprinted in Hasenson (2004), p. 63.
Upon Reese's death in 1996, Schapiro wrote: "... Terence was the best player, one of only two geniuses I have known. The other was Lasker, 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."Hasenson (2004), p. 149.
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.Mollo, Victor (1967). The Bridge Immortals. London: Faber. Page 85. (US edition, 1968). New York: Hart Publishing. Page 119.
Alan Truscott wrote in The New York Times 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."Truscott, Alan (12 February 1996). "Bridge". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-11-12.
The Buenos Aires affair In the 1965 Buenos Aires Bermuda Bowl, B. Jay Becker noticed Reese and his partner, Boris Schapiro, holding their cards in what he regarded as unusual ways during bidding; the claim that was made was the number of fingers showing indicated the length of the heart suit. A number of players and observers, including Dorothy Hayden, New York Times columnist 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 Shapiro 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 a hearing lasting many months, including a surprise revelation by Swimer that Schapiro had confessed his guilt to him - though Swimer never mentioned this at the Hearing in Buenos Aires - the "Foster Enquiry" rebutted much of the evidence.English Bridge Union Quarterly, No. 4, February 1967, pages 1-4. They pointed out that the Hearing itself in Buenos Aires had a number of unsatisfactory features; there was no proof that the finger signals communicated any more information than bidding would have done; the impact of the Reese & Schapiro team could not have affected the result of at least one of the matches at issue (vs Argentina); 'Mr Kehela the Vice-Captain and Coach of the (USA) team, stated that he had come to the conclusion that the two players accused were not cheating’;English Bridge Union Quarterly, No. 4, February 1967, last paragraph of page 3. and other salient points. The BBL Inquiry did not merely find that there was inconclusive evidence that the players had benefitted from the signals in their bidding or play but rather 'We find that Messrs. Reese and Schapiro were not guilty of cheating at the Tournament in question'.Ibid. Last sentence
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. In 1968, a compromise was reached, the WBF maintaining their guilty verdict, but allowing Reese and Schapiro (who had announced his retirement from international bridge after the Buenos Aires Olympiad) to play in future world championships.