Bill Root (bridge)

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William S. (Bill) Root (December 12, 1923 – March 18, 2002) was an American professional bridge player, teacher, and writer. He was from Boca Raton, Florida.[1]

Root was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1997.[2] The American Contract Bridge League observed in his citation, "Root was perhaps the best known bridge teacher in the world – and has probably taught the game to more people than anyone in history."[3]

Life

Root was born in New York City and raised in Miami, Florida.[3] He died at age 79 in Boca Raton, Florida.

Jettison play

One of the most famous hands in his books is a seven notrump contract requiring a very advanced jettison play. High cards often get in the declarer's way, that is they block the effective play of the hand. A solution to these blocking problems is to throw away high cards. This unblocking coup is known as the jettison play.

South in 7NT ♠ A Q
♥ K Q J
♦ 3
♣ J 9 7 6 5 4 2
♠ J 10 2

N

W               E

S

 ♠ 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
♥ 10 8 7 4 ♥ 9 6 5 3 2
♦ J 7 5 2 ♦ —
♣ 8 3 ♣ 10
Lead: ♠J ♠ K
♥ A
♦ A K Q 10 9 8 6 4
♣ A K Q

Win the opening lead of ♠J with the ace, dropping the king of spades. Cash the queen of spades, and jettison the ace of hearts from hand. Now cash the top hearts in dummy and jettison the top three clubs from hand! You can now run the clubs to discard diamond losers. This line of play has the advantage of trying out the club suit before seeing if the diamonds run. Due to this particular hand layout, the diamonds don't run because of the 4-0 split, while the clubs run because of the singleton ♣10. If the clubs did not split favorably, declarer could still try to run the diamonds using dummy's ♦3 to get back into declarer's hand.

Bridge accomplishments

Honors

  • ACBL Hall of Fame, 1997[2]

Wins

Runners-up

Books

  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Both 154 pp.
  • ——— (1972 [c1971]). New Contract Bridge Outlines on Standard Bidding. Crown Publishers (New York). 64 pages. OCLC 319921
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. 96 pp.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. All 244 pp.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. 216 pp.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. 309 pp.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. 410 pp.
  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. 281 pp.

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Induction by Year". Hall of Fame. ACBL. Retrieved 2014-12-20.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Root, William". Hall of Fame. ACBL. Retrieved 2014-12-20.

External links

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