July 2012 - 17

Canadian Hall of Fame

an accomplished player. He held the West
cards on today's hand:
Dlr: East
Vul: E-W

photo by Jonathan Steinberg

Baran

AK95
 K Q 10 7 6 4
Q4
7
 Q J 10 6 4
83
N
A95
J832
W E
KJ
75
S
 A Q 10
J9632
72
-
 A 10 9 8 6 3 2
K854
West

North

1
Pass
Pass
Dbl

Dbl
3
5
All Pass

East
Pass
Pass
Pass
Pass

South
Pass
3
4
Pass

Anderson led the Q, won in the dummy. Declarer led a club with the view to
obtaining ruffs in the dummy, and ducked
it to West's 10. Anderson found the only
continuation to sink the contract: the K.
Declarer won the ace, but now a club ruff
would bring West's trump jack back into
play, and no club ruff would result in two
more club losers.
Nagy

Anderson: "I used to claim I was the
best actuary among bridge players,
but quickly abandoned that claim after meeting Bill Anderson, after which
I claimed only to be the best bridge
player among actuaries."
Anderson was a successful player,
Life Master No. 357, playing with his
wife, Marjorie, most of the time, and
winning a North American Bridge
Championship (NABC) with her. Here
is Anderson in action on a deal reported in the Goren syndicated bridge
column:
The 4-3-2-1 point count was introduced by Bryant McCampbell in 1915 and
publicized by Milton Work in his many writings. However, it was used almost only for
notrump bidding. It was not until a Toronto
actuary, William Anderson, developed the
distributional count in the Forties that point
count swept the bridge world.
Besides his fascination with the mathematical aspects of bridge, Anderson was

Just as Milton Work popularized
the 4-3-2-1 count developed by
Bryant McCampbell, Goren popularized Anderson's 3-2-1 count. Point
Count Bidding in Contract Bridge
was a runaway bestseller, eventually
selling more than three million copies.
There were 12 reprintings in its first
five years and it was translated into
many languages.
Anderson belongs with the most
influential figures in the game, alongside Work, Culbertson and Goren.
Boris Baran and Mark Molson
Just as the names of Romulus and
Remus, Heloise and Abelard and
Lewis and Clark are forever linked in
history, the names of "Mark and Boris"
are forever entwined in Canadian
bridge.
Although many of their successes
came as partners, they were successful with others as well. Molson and
Baran won seven Canadian National
Team Championships (CNTC), one

Canadian Open Pairs Championship and five North American Bridge
Championships together. They
finished second in the 1995 Bermuda
Bowl, second in the 1992 Pan-American Games and tied for third in the
1990 Rosenblum in Geneva, Switzerland, being denied a place in the final
by a scoring error, the correction disallowed upon appeal, one of the most
notorious incidents in World Bridge
Federation history.
Molson won two more NABCs with
other partners, the Reisinger and the
Blue Ribbon Pairs, and Baran has won
a Senior World Team Championship,
an eighth CNTC and three Canadian
Senior Team Championships without
Molson. Molson also won the Richmond Trophy as the top Canadian
masterpoint winner five times. It
is entirely appropriate that they be
inducted into the CBF Hall of Fame
together. Molson died in 2006 of complications during surgery following
a massive heart attack while playing
golf, the other game he loved.
One of Baran's more notable deals
occurred in that ill-fated semifinal
match against Germany in the 1990
Rosenblum:
Dlr: South  Q 10 7 6
Vul: Both  Q 6 5
A763
A9
K93
AJ84
N
943
K872
W E
 Q 10
K954
S
 J 10 6 4 2
3
52
 A J 10
J82
KQ875
West North
East
South
Baran Bitschene Molson Ludewig
1 (1)
(2)
Pass
1NT
Pass
2 (3)
Pass
Pass
Dbl
Pass
2
Dbl
All Pass
(1) Canapé.
(2) Relay: 10 or more high-card points.
(3) Longer clubs than hearts, 10-12
HCP.
➤
July 2012 Bridge Bulletin

17
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July 2012
