Lt. Col. Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

Walter Buller (10 December 1886 – 21 May 1938) was a British

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

and

contract bridge Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions o ...

organiser, player and writer, the leading British bridge personality at the start of the 1930s. Buller was from

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Life

Buller joined the Army Service Corps as a commissioned officer in 1907 and served throughout World War I, first as a Sixth Division

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

in France and then as a staff officer in the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

, where he became lieutenant colonel in 1917. He retired on pay in 1923 and thereafter lived in London.

Bridge career

Buller was one of those responsible for contract bridge being adopted at the Portland Club, after the game and its new scoring system was brought to England by Lord Lascelles and Jimmie

Rothschild Rothschild () is a name derived from the German ''zum rothen Schild'' (with the old spelling "th"), meaning "with the red sign", in reference to the houses where these family members lived or had lived. At the time, houses were designated by sign ...

in 1927. The Portland Club, which regulated the laws of whist since early in the nineteenth century, remains the law-giving body for bridge in Britain, and has taken part in every subsequent revision of the laws of bridge. In Buller's bridge career, and his weekly column for the

Star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

, he was a showman whose motto was "Must do something to stir them up!". As such, he was the perfect foil to

Ely Culbertson Elie Almon Culbertson (July 22, 1891 – December 27, 1955), known as Ely Culbertson, was an American contract bridge entrepreneur and personality dominant during the 1930s. He played a major role in the popularization of the new game and was wide ...

, the great publicist for

. Buller organised the first Anglo-American match against the Culbertson team in 1930, and captained the English team. This match inaugurated the 'Golden Age' of contract bridge, leading to an extraordinary amount of publicity in the press. Culbertson, a genius as a publicist, created many small incidents for the benefit of the press, and Buller did his best to provide quotable phrases in his interviews and his books. Buller was the leading proponent of the direct bidding system called ''British Bridge''. It prided itself on having no conventional (artificial) bids. He was a bridge columnist, and wrote several books. Buller won the first English National Pairs in 1932.Manley et al (2011), p. 190. In the famous match at

Almack's Almack's was the name of a number of establishments and social clubs in London between the 18th and 20th centuries. Two of the social clubs would go on to fame as Brooks's and Boodle's. Almack's most famous establishment was based in assembly roo ...

club the English team was Buller, Mrs Gordon Evers, Dr Nelson Wood-Hill

FRCS Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons (FRCS) is a professional qualification to practise as a senior surgeon in Ireland or the United Kingdom. It is bestowed on an intercollegiate basis by the four Royal Colleges of Surgeons (the Royal C ...

and Cedric Kehoe RN. Mrs Gordon Evers was Walter Buller's favourite partner: "white-haired and striking, she had toured the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

as an actress in Sir

Herbert Tree Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (17 December 1852 – 2 July 1917) was an English actor and theatre manager. Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre in the West End, winning praise for adventurous program ...

's company". The former world chess champion,

Emanuel Lasker Emanuel Lasker (; December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially recognised World Chess Champ ...

, reported the match for German and Austrian newspapers; he became a registered teacher of the Culbertson system. The US team was Culbertson and his wife Josephine,

Theodore Lightner Theodore Alexander "Teddy" Lightner (14 September 1893 – November 1981) was an American bridge player. He developed the Lightner double, a bridge bidding convention. Lightner was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and moved to Chicago and later ...

and Waldemar von Zedwitz. All the members of the American team would be recognised as outstanding players in the years that followed. Both their partnerships were experienced and organised; the result of the match was not long in doubt. Culbertson won by 4,845 points over a week's play of 200 deals (total points scoring): not quite so bad for Buller as it might have been.

Hubert Phillips Hubert Phillips (13 December 1891 – 9 January 1964) was a British economist, journalist, broadcaster, bridge player and organiser, composer of puzzles and quizzes, and the author of some 70 books. Life Education and early career Phil ...

commented on the match: :"The Culbertson Forcing System was definitely vindicated. The contest showed that 'card sense', intelligent guesswork fortified by experience, cannot stand up against a methodical system of conveying information also fortified by card sense." Later, in 1934, a match between Buller's team and Almack's Club was played, in which Almack's used ideas taken from Culbertson. Almack's won, knocking another nail in the coffin of Buller's system. The consequence was that direct and entirely natural bidding went out of favour, never to return. In the future, even natural bidding systems used detailed agreements and conventions.

Publications

* ''Reflections of a Bridge Player, with a chapter on 'how to bid at contract (London: Methuen & Co., 1929) * ''From Auction to Contract: the logic of British Bridge'' (Methuen, 1932) – "Contains the famous accusation that forcing bids are equivalent to scratching one's head or blowing one's nose to convey information" –Leslie Parris, ''Contract bridge books'' * ''How to Play Contract Bridge'' (London:

The Star ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

, 1932) * ''Colonel Buller on the Beasley–Culbertson bridge contest, 1933: the 6303 calls reviewed and analysed'' (The Star, 1933) – contains "sustained vituperation against American methods ... always entertaining" –Leslie Parris * ''The Buller–Almacks bridge contest (the best contract bridge yet seen in this country)'', Buller and Ewart Kempson (London: 1934) – discusses 76 of the 100 hands * ''The Way to Play: The Buller system of contract bridge'' (The Star, 1936) Buller also introduced the London ''

News Chronicle The ''News Chronicle'' was a British daily newspaper. Formed by the merger of '' The Daily News'' and the ''Daily Chronicle'' in 1930, it ceased publication on 17 October 1960,''Liberal Democrat News'' 15 October 2010, accessed 15 October 2010 be ...

s 222-page record of the 1930 match: ''International Bridge Test: complete record of bidding, play & scores in "duplicate" contract bridge match between England & America'' (London: ''

'', 1930)"International bridge test "
Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2014-05-24.

References

;Citations * Appendix CD2: Biographies and Results. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Buller, Walter (bridge) 1886 births 1938 deaths British and Irish contract bridge players English contract bridge players Bridge players from London Contract bridge writers British Army personnel of World War I Place of birth missing Royal Army Service Corps officers