Who and what age is the oldest active tournament director in the world?
T.D.'s, as they are generally known, like to be seen but rarely heard. They announce the movement at the beginning of a session and prefer to spend the rest of the time watching everything run smoothly. If they are never heard again, it means that no one broke one of the laws, because if a player does, a T.D. must be called to give a ruling.
The oldest active T.D. is Sidney Matthews at the Marbella Club in Spain, who celebrated his 100th birthday Nov. 13. He was the declarer on the diagramed deal, which occurred during a duplicate at the International Bridge Club in Marbella and was reported by the English expert Tony Priday.
The two-spade rebid was not natural, but fourth-suit game-forcing. North, who had already shown five diamonds and four clubs and could not bid no-trump without a spade stopper, had to continue with three hearts. Ideally this would have included three-card support, but sometimes opener must raise with only a doubleton, especially when it is strong.
West led the club queen. Assuming trumps were 3-2, Matthews could see that his contract was safe, but in a match-pointed pair game, overtricks are valuable, so South wanted to win 11 tricks. He could hope that the spade finesse was winning (50 percent) or play for diamonds to split 4-3 (62 percent).
Matthews knew which was more likely. But to establish a long diamond, declarer would have to ruff three diamonds in his hand, which would require four dummy entries: three for the ruffs and one to reach the established winner.
South, seeing that he had the diamond ace, heart king, heart ace and club king, won with his club ace, played a diamond to dummy's ace and ruffed the diamond five in his hand. Using dummy's two trumps as entries, South also ruffed the diamond seven and diamond eight.
Now declarer led the spade queen from his hand. West took his king and returned a club, but South won with dummy's king and discarded his spade five on the established diamond deuce. East later scored the heart queen, but Matthews had his overtrick for a tied top on the board.
West, after complimenting South's play, said that next time he would lead a trump, which would prematurely burn up one of those dummy entries and stop the overtrick.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907EFDC1E3FF933A25751C0A9619C8B63&n=
Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fC%2fCards%20and%20Card%20Games
