Jacoby Open Swiss
A multinational team captained by Sweden’s Peter Bertheau scored a near blitz on the final round to move from third place to first in the Jacoby Open Swiss Teams in last year’s competition.
The winners were Bertheau and Fredrik Nystrom of Sweden, Italian stars Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes, American Christal Henner-Welland and transplanted Canadian Fred Gitelman.
The winners’ final total was 135.25 Victory Points to 133.75 for the team captained by Eddie Wold (George Rosenkranz, Mike Passell, Eric Greco and Geoff Hampson)
The Jacoby Trophy
The Open Swiss Teams begin play today with the Jacoby Trophy going to the winners. This is a four-session event with two qualifying sessions and two final sessions.
The trophy is named for Oswald and Jim Jacoby -- one of the premier father-son pairs in ACBL history, the first father-son to win a national championship together and the first father-son to be elected to the ACBL Bridge Hall of Fame.
The senior Jacoby (1902-1984) won his first major title -- the National Team Championship of the American Whist League -- in 1929 and his last major title -- the Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams -- in 1983.
In between, he won the McKenney Trophy (now the Barry Crane Top 500) four times. He was the first player to win 1,000 masterpoints in a single year and the first player to earn 10,000 masterpoints.
Jacoby won seven Spingolds, seven Vanderbilts, two Reisingers and more than a dozen other major titles. He was named to the ACBL Bridge Hall of Fame in 1965.
He and son Jim are the co-authors of Jacoby Transfer Bids, Jacoby 2NT and other bidding ideas. Together, they won the Reisinger in 1955 -- when Jim was 22 -- and the Vanderbilt in 1965.
Jim Jacoby (1933-1991), elected to the Hall of Fame in 1997, won the Bermuda Bowl in 1970 and 1971, the World Mixed Teams in 1972 and the World Team Olympiad in 1988. He won more than 14 NABC titles and captured the Barry Crane Top 500 in 1988 -- the same year he won the Olympiad title.
He is one of only three players to win the masterpoint title and a world championship in the same year -- Charles Goren won the Bermuda Bowl and the McKenney in 1950 while Barry Crane won the World Mixed Pairs and the McKenney in 1978.
Previous Winners:
1982 Allan Stauber, Jan Janitschke, Ross Grabel, Mike Smolen
1983 Mike Albert, Ira Rubin, Grant Baze, Barry Crane
1984 Bart Bramley, Mark Cohen, Milt Rosenberg, Ralph Katz
1985 John Devine, Alan Sontag, John Mohan, Roger Bates
1986 Mark Cohen, Peter Boyd, Steve Robinson, Kit Woolsey
1987 Eddie Kantar, Alan Sontag, Roger Bates, John Mohan, John Devine
1988 Ron Sukoneck, Doug Fraser, Kamel Fergani, Bill Pettis
1989 Jim Mahaffey, Ron Andersen, Paul Soloway, Bobby Goldman, Jeff Meckstroth, Eric Rodwell
(became Open Swiss Teams)
1990 John Sutherlin, Bart Bramley, Gerald Michaud, Larry Richardson, Bob Hamman
1991 George Rosenkranz, Eddie Wold, Mark Lair, Mike Passell, Paul Soloway, Bobby Goldman
1992 Richard Schwartz, Drew Casen, Michael Seamon, Richard Pavlicek, Fred Stewart, Steve Weinstein
1993 Tony Kasday, Michael Seamon, Steve Sion, Billy Cohen, Ron Smith
1994 Perry Johnson, Jeff Meckstroth, Chip Martel, Eric Rodwell
1995 Ralph Cohen, Billy Cohen, Peter Nagy, George Mittelman, Marty Sklar, Hugh Ross
1996 Jimmy Cayne, Bjorn Fallenius, Brian Glubok, Chuck Burger, Mats Nisland, Mike Passell
1997 Edgar Kaplan, Norman Kay, Brian Glubok, Bart Bramley, Walter Schafer, Geir Helgemo
1998 Edith Rosenkranz, Ralph Cohen, Ron Smith, Bob Etter, Bob Morris
1999 Sam Lev, Brian Glubok, Michael Polowan, John Mohan, Barnet Shenkin
2000 Mike Cappelletti, Gary Cohler, Mark Lair, Richard Finberg
2001 George Jacobs, Ralph Katz, Alfredo Versace, Lorenzo Lauria, Norberto Bocchi, Giorgio Duboin
2002 Perry Johnson, Jeff Meckstroth, Eric Rodwell, Paul Soloway
2003 Peter Bertheau, Fredrik Nystrom, Christal Henner-Welland, Fulvio Fantoni, Claudio Nunes, Fred Gitelman
