Competition

Bermuda Bowl

Also Known As World Zonal Open Team Championship So called because entries formally represent World Bridge Federation zones as well as nations.

Mind Sport World Championships

The Bermuda Bowl is bridge's premier world teams championship for open, unrestricted national teams, first contested in Hamilton, Bermuda in November 1950 between the United States, Great Britain and a combined European team, with the American team winning both of its round robin matches. It is organized today by the World Bridge Federation, founded on 18 August 1958 in Oslo, Norway by delegates from Europe, North America and South America and now headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. The event is contested every odd numbered year alongside the companion women's event, the Venice Cup, and the Senior Bowl. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts

Founding Year

1950 1

Frequency

Contested every odd numbered year 1

Host History

First held in Hamilton, Bermuda in 1950; the World Bridge Federation that now organizes it was founded eight years later, in 1958 in Oslo. 2

Classification

Scope

World or International 1

Learn More

Three Teams in a Hotel: The First Bermuda Bowl

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The first Bermuda Bowl, held at the Castle Harbor Hotel in Hamilton, Bermuda in November 1950, was a modest affair by the standard of the event it would become: three teams, the United States, Great Britain and a combined European side, playing round robin matches against each other over a few days on the island chosen mainly for its convenient midpoint location between the American and European bridge communities the tournament was designed to bring together.

The American team left undefeated, winning both of its matches, a result that set an early pattern of United States' dominance in the event long before the tournament grew into the global, multi zone championship it is today. No permanent federation organized that first event; the World Bridge Federation would not exist for another eight years, meaning the Bermuda Bowl, like several of the competitions in this wave, began as a competition in search of a governing body rather than the other way around.

Odd Years and Even Ambitions: How the Bermuda Bowl Cycle Works

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Bermuda Bowl is contested every odd numbered year as part of a larger World Bridge Championships gathering that also stages the Venice Cup for women's national teams and the Senior Bowl for players above a set age threshold, all held at the same event and often at the same venue. Grouping the three championships together rather than staging them as separate standalone events lets the World Bridge Federation concentrate its organizational resources, its qualification structures and its media attention into one biennial gathering instead of three smaller ones spread across the calendar.

The federation itself, formed in 1958 in Oslo by delegates from Europe, North America and South America, moved its headquarters to Lausanne, Switzerland in 2002, settling in the same city as the International Olympic Committee even though bridge has never gained Olympic recognition as a medal sport, a proximity that reflects the federation's own long running ambition to be treated as a mind sport on comparable institutional footing.

Connections