Boris Schapiro

After graduating, Schapiro joined the family horse trading and meat business and worked there until his forties, when he retired to capitalise on his love of gambling by becoming the banker of a baccarat syndicate at Crockford's gaming club in London.He also represented Britain in the 1964 Olympiad and the Bermuda Bowl of the same year, which was played early in 1965, and in ten European Bridge League national teams championships, winning in 1948, 1949, 1954 and 1963.In the 1965 Buenos Aires Bermuda Bowl, B. Jay Becker noticed Schapiro and his partner, Terence Reese, holding their cards in unusual ways during bidding, the number of fingers showing indicating length of the heart suit.A number of players and observers, including Dorothy Hayden, New York Times columnists 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.The British Bridge League (BBL) subsequently convened their own enquiry, chaired by Sir John Foster, barrister and Member of Parliament, and General Lord Bourne.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.In May 2005, the English journalist David Rex-Taylor, a bridge player and publisher, claimed that Reese had made a confession to him forty years earlier, one that was not to be revealed until 2005 and after he and Schapiro were dead.Dimmie Fleming – another international player and the only woman to play on the British open team – defused the situation by signing next, drawing an upwards arrow and writing, "But will he ever be adult?"[11] Another story shows his partner Terence Reese picking up a collection of silver cup trophies from Schapiro's flat in Eaton Place (the Upstairs, Downstairs setting) and carrying them in a pillow-case.Stopped in the street by a policeman and asked to explain his unusual sack of possessions, Reese led the officer back to the flat so that Schapiro could validate his explanation.