Benito Garozzo (born 5 September 1927) is an Italian American bridge player. He won 13 world championship titles with the Italian Blue Team, starting in 1961 when he was added as a last minute substitute for the Bermuda Bowl, playing in regular partnerships with

Pietro Forquet Pietro Forquet (2 July 1925 – 27 January 2023) was an Italian bridge player, one of the most famous in bridge history. He won 15 World championship titles with the Blue Team, playing with Eugenio Chiaradia, Guglielmo Siniscalco and, for the ...

to 1972 and then with

Giorgio Belladonna Giorgio Belladonna (7 June 1923 – 12 May 1995) was an Italian bridge player, one of the greatest of all time. He won 16 world championship titles with the Blue Team, playing with Walter Avarelli from 1956 to 1969 and later with Benito Garozzo. ...

. During those championship years he came to be considered by many experts the world's best

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

player.

Life

Garozzo was born in

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, Italy, at a time when his family lived primarily in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

, Egypt, but Naples was a second, summer home of his mother, four sisters and brother. At age six his brother taught him

tresette Tressette or Tresette is a 40-card, trick-taking card game. It is one of Italy's major national card games, together with Scopa and Briscola. It is also popular in the regions that were once controlled by the Italian predecessor states, such as A ...

, a partnership

trick-taking game A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a ''hand'' centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called ''tricks'', which are each evaluated to determine a winner or ''taker'' of that trick. The object of such g ...

with dummy play. He also learned chess from his brother. During World War II, he lived at a sister's home in Naples, where family and friends played partnership games including tresette. During 1943 they started to play bridge with reference to a Culbertson book from 1933. After the war he returned to Cairo "and met better bridge players and I improved my game reading more recent books and playing the dummy on Auto Bridge." In 1984 he settled in Naples where he owned a jewelry business as of 1984. Garozzo is user ''sillafu'' at Bridge Base Online. He has lived in the United States since 1987 and has been a citizen since January 1994. He is divorced with a son and daughter; his life partner for more than 30 years was Lea Dupont of

Rockland, Delaware Rockland is an unincorporated community in northern New Castle County, Delaware, United States. It lies along Rockland Road north of the city of Wilmington, the county seat of New Castle County. Its elevation is 194 feet (59 m). It ha ...

(also Italy and Florida). They were second in the quadrennial, 1998

World Senior Pairs Championship The World Senior Pairs Championship is one of the competitions held as part of the quadrennial World Bridge Championships (formerly World Pairs Olympiad), inaugurated at the 8th rendition of the meet in 1990. Prior to 2005 both members of each pai ...

and won a major North American tournament for senior teams in 2009. She died on 6 April 2012.

Career

Forquet and Garozzo used the

Blue Club Blue Club is a bridge bidding system, developed mainly by Benito Garozzo. It was used by the famous Blue Team and became very popular in the 1960s. It has gained a strong following ever since. The main features are: * Strong club system: 1 open ...

bidding system A bidding system in contract bridge is the set of agreements and understandings assigned to calls and sequences of calls used by a partnership, and includes a full description of the meaning of each treatment and convention. The purpose of bid ...

, which they developed based on the Neapolitan Club that Forquet had used with its creator Eugenio Chiaradia, the "Professor" of the early Blue Team. They wrote one book on the system together, published in 1967 (''Il Fiori Blue Team'', in Italian, or the Blue Team Club), and Garozzo wrote another with Léon Yallouze (1968, in French). The Blue Team as "Italy" won nine consecutive then-annual world championships, all of the seven Bermuda Bowl and two quadrennial World Team Olympiad tournaments from 1961 to 1969, retired for two years, and returned to win the 1972 Olympiad. The Blue Team had used six players without any change in personnel for the latter seven of those ten tournaments. Three of them retired after 1972, including Belladonna's longtime partner

Walter Avarelli Walter Avarelli (3 June 1912 – 1987) was an Italian bridge player, a member of the famous Blue Team, with whom he won nine Bermuda Bowls and three World Team Olympiads from 1956 to 1972. Avarelli was born in Rome and became a judge there. He fi ...

. Belladonna–Garozzo then established a partnership and co-created their advanced version of the

Precision Club Precision Club is a bidding system in the game of contract bridge. It is a strong club system developed in 1969 for C. C. Wei by Alan Truscott, and used by Taiwan teams in 1969. Their success in placing second at the 1969 Bermuda Bowl (and Wei's ...

system called "Super Precision". With four other players sometimes including Forquet, they won for Italy three more world team championships in succession, the 1973 to 1975 Bermuda Bowls.

Books

* ''Il Fiori Blue Team'', Forquet and Garozzo (Milan: Prati, 1967), * ''Le Trèfle "blue-team"'' (Paris: Presse spécialisée, 1968), 255 pp., * ''Bridge de compétition, esprit et technique'', Garozzo and Léon Yallouze, with collaboration of Claude Delmouly and Jean Fayard (Paris: Fayard, 1968), 293 pp.; also known as ''Bridge de l'avenir'', , * ''The Blue Club'', Garozzo and Yallouze, adapted rom the Frenchby

Terence Reese 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 Bradfiel ...

(Faber and Faber, 1969) – "Adaptation of ''Bridge de compétition''." * ''Italian Blue Team bridge book'', Forquet and Garozzo with Enzo Mingoni (Grosset & Dunlap, 1969), pp. 274 pp. – "Translation of ''Il fiori blue team''.", , ; (London: Cassell, 1970), * ''The Precision Club'', C.C. Wei, adapted by Belladonna and Garozzo, transl. Jim Becker (''The Bridge World'' and Barclay Bridge Supplies, 1972), 24 pp., and * ''Precision system e Superprecision'', Belladonna and Garozzo (Milan: Mursia, 1973), 291 pp., * ''Precision and Super Precision bidding'', Belladonna and Garozzo (Putnam, 1975), 237 pp., ; (London: Cassell, 1976), – transl. of ''Precision system e Superprecision'' * ''New revised summary of the Super Precision system'', C.C. Wei, Belladonna and Garozzo (New York: Monna Lisa Precision Corp., 1975), 39 pp., * ''Il sistema Lancia'', Belladonna and Garozzo (Mursia, 1976), 235 pp., * ''Il nuovissimo Fiori Romano'', Belladonna and Garozzo (Mursia, 1976), 195 pp., ; see also ''Il sistema Fiori Romano'' (1955) and ''The Roman Club system of distributional bidding'', Belladonna and

(Simon and Schuster, 1959), 162 pp.,

Bridge accomplishments

Awards

* Charles J. Solomon Award (The Best Played Hand of the Year) 1975, 1980 * Romex Award (The Best Bid Hand of the Year) 1984

Wins

Bermuda Bowl The Bermuda Bowl is a biennial contract bridge world championship for national . It is contested every odd-numbered year under the auspices of the World Bridge Federation (WBF), alongside the Venice Cup (women), the d'Orsi Senior Bowl and the Wuh ...

(10) 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1974, 1975 * World Open Team Olympiad (3) 1964, 1968, 1972 *

North American Bridge Championships North American Bridge Championships (NABC) are three annual bridge tournaments sponsored by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). The "Spring", "Summer", and "Fall" NABCs are usually scheduled in March, July, and November for about eleven da ...

(4) ** North American Swiss Teams (1) 1984 **

Senior Knockout Teams The Baze Senior Knockout Teams national bridge championship was held at the fall American Contract Bridge League The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) is a governing body for contract bridge in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda. ...

(1) 1995 ** Senior Swiss Teams (1) 2009 ** Men's Pairs (1) 1971 * European Championships (5) ** Open Teams (5) 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1979 * European Union/European Community Bridge League (2) ** Open Pairs (1) 1973 ** Mixed Teams (1) 1983 * Italian Championships (18) ** Open Teams (12) 1958, 1963, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1983, 1985 ** Open Cup (3) 1965, 1968, 1977 ** Open Pairs (1) 1956 ** Men's Cup (1) 2003 ** Mixed Teams (1) 1983 * Other notable wins: ** Cap Gemini Pandata World Top Invitational Pairs (1) 1991 ** Pamp World Par Contest (1) 1990

Runners-up

(3) 1976, 1979, 1983 * World Open Team Olympiad (1) 1976 *

World Open Pairs The World Open Pairs Championship is a contract bridge competition initiated in 1962 and held as part of the World Bridge Series Championships every four years. Open to all pairs without any quota restrictions on nationality, the championship is wi ...

(1) 1970 * World Senior Pairs (1) 1998 *

(6) ** North American Swiss Teams (3) 1981, 1995, 2000 **

Jacoby Open Swiss Teams The Jacoby Open Swiss Teams national bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). The Jacoby Open Swiss Teams is a four session Swiss Teams event with two qualifying ...

(2) 1993, 2001 ** Mixed Pairs (1) 1983 * European Championships (3) ** Open Teams (2) 1977, 1983 ** Senior Teams 2017 * European Union/European Community Bridge League (1) ** Open Pairs (1) 1969 * Italian Championships (8) ** Open Teams (5) 1965, 1966, 1979, 1980, 1986 ** Open Cup (1) 1956 ** Mixed Teams (1) 1984 ** Senior Cup (1) 2003 * Other notable 2nd places: ** Lancia Challenge Match (1) 1975 ** Sunday Times Invitational Pairs (1) 1971 ** World Bridge Production Pairs (1) 2000

References

External links

* * *
Audio-video interview
uploaded 23 October 2009 by ACBLvideo at YouTube
"Benito Garozzo"
at BridgeBum
"Pietro Forquet"
at BridgeBum (bridgebum.com) * (including 1 "from old catalog") {{DEFAULTSORT:Garozzo, Benito 1927 births Italian contract bridge players Contract bridge writers American contract bridge players Bermuda Bowl players Sportspeople from Naples Living people Italian expatriates in Egypt Italian emigrants to the United States