History of the Spingold Trophy: Bridge’s Summer Knockout Classic

If the Vanderbilt is bridge’s spring classic, the Spingold is summer’s answer—another brutal knockout tournament where reputations are made and broken over 60-board marathons. But while Vanderbilt’s history connects to railroad money and social prestige, the Spingold has a more human story: a successful businessman who loved bridge and wanted to give something back.

Nathan Spingold’s Vision (1934)

Nathan B. Spingold wasn’t a bridge champion. He was a movie theater executive, vice president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and a bridge enthusiast who played the game for love rather than glory. In 1934, he donated a trophy for a new knockout team championship at what was then called the Summer Nationals.

The timing mattered. Contract bridge was exploding across America. Ely Culbertson had made bridge fashionable among the wealthy, but the game was spreading to middle-class clubs, college campuses, and wherever four people had cards and a few hours. Bridge needed more championships, more reasons to compete, more trophies to chase.

Spingold’s trophy was beautiful—sterling silver, properly ornate, expensive enough to matter. More importantly, he structured it as a true knockout: win and advance, lose and go home. No second chances. Just like the Vanderbilt, which had proven that elimination formats created drama that total-point events couldn’t match.

The first Spingold was won by a team from New York, because in 1934, most winning bridge teams were from New York. That would change, but it took decades.

Finding Its Identity (1930s-1950s)

For its first twenty years, the Spingold lived in the Vanderbilt’s shadow. Both were knockout team events. Both attracted the best players. The difference was timing—Vanderbilt in spring, Spingold in summer—and a subtle prestige gap that nobody could quite explain but everyone acknowledged.

Maybe it was because Vanderbilt came first. Maybe it was because Harold Stirling Vanderbilt had invented the game itself, while Nathan Spingold just loved it. Or maybe it was because winning in spring, when you’re fresh, seemed less impressive than winning in summer after a season of competition.

Whatever the reason, the Spingold was the tournament everyone wanted to win after they’d won the Vanderbilt. That sounds like an insult, but it’s not—being the second-most prestigious knockout in North America still meant something significant.

The post-war years changed that dynamic. Returning veterans flooded into bridge clubs, bringing the card skills they’d developed during long military deployments. The competition level spiked. By the 1950s, winning the Spingold required beating players who’d learned bridge playing for cigarettes in Quonset huts and destroyer mess halls.

The Aces Dynasty (1960s-1970s)

The Spingold came into its own during the Dallas Aces era. Ira Corn’s professional team treated both the Vanderbilt and Spingold as equally important—two chances each year to prove they were the best team in North America.

The Aces won the Spingold in 1969, 1971, and 1972. Not by luck, but by preparation that bordered on obsessive. They studied opponents, practiced specific scenarios, and approached each match like a chess master approaching a grandmaster game.

But the Spingold’s knockout format meant even the Aces could lose. In 1973, they were knocked out in the semifinals by a team that had simply caught fire at the right time. The better team lost to the hotter team, which is exactly what makes knockout formats brutal and compelling.

Other dynasties emerged. The Nickell team won the Spingold so many times that Dick Freeman joked about needing a separate trophy case. Bobby Wolff and Bob Hamman accumulated Spingold victories the way some people collect stamps. Young partnerships used Spingold victories to announce they’d arrived among the elite.

The Great Matches (1980s-1990s)

The 1985 Spingold final produced one of the great matches in American bridge history. Two powerhouse teams—both featuring multiple world champions—battled through 60 boards that came down to the final deal.

The last board was a pusher 4♠—both tables would reach the same contract, and it looked like a normal contract that would likely make. But at one table, the defenders found a killing defense that required both perfect carding and a truly inspired opening lead. The contract went down, the IMPs swung double digits, and the championship changed hands.

The losing declarer analyzed that hand for months. Should he have played differently? Was the defense genius or lucky? Could he have picked up the position? Years later, he admitted he still didn’t know the answer, which is probably the truth—sometimes great defense beats good declarer play, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

The 1992 Spingold saw another memorable moment, though for the wrong reasons. A team was accused of hesitations providing illegal information during a crucial quarterfinal match. The protest went to committee, the committee ruled, appeals were filed, and eventually the original result stood. But the controversy lingered.

Bridge has always walked a fine line with information. You’re required to bid naturally enough that partners can understand, but not so clearly that you’re transmitting encrypted messages. The line between good partnership understanding and illegal signals is sometimes obvious and sometimes invisible, and knockout matches stress that line until it breaks.

Technology Changes Everything (2000s)

By the 2000s, technology had revolutionized bridge preparation. Teams could review opponents’ bidding tendencies from thousands of online hands. Analytics revealed patterns that human memory couldn’t track. The information edge that veteran partnerships once enjoyed was eroding.

The 2006 Spingold demonstrated the shift. A relatively young team—none over forty—defeated a veteran squad with centuries of combined experience. The young team had studied their opponents’ BBO records, identified bidding patterns, and exploited them mercilessly. The veterans complained about “computer bridge” replacing “real bridge,” but they lost anyway.

BBO VuGraph meant every major Spingold match was broadcast live to a global audience. Thousands watched online, with expert commentators analyzing every decision. The pressure became immense. A mistake in the round of 32 might be forgotten. A mistake in the finals, broadcast live to the bridge world, would haunt you forever.

The Modern Era (2010s-Present)

The 2010s brought both the highest level of play in Spingold history and the most serious scandals. The cheating controversies that rocked bridge in 2015 touched multiple Spingold champions—pairs who’d won the trophy were suspended, results were questioned, and the bridge community spent years arguing about proof, statistics, and trust.

Some victories stood—no specific evidence of cheating in those events. Others were vacated. Either way, the taint remained. Players who’d earned legitimate victories found their achievements questioned. The Spingold’s history, like bridge’s history, would forever have asterisks next to certain years.

But the tournament continued. In 2019, the Spingold final featured two superteams with rosters that read like a Hall of Fame ballot. The match was extraordinary—high-level bidding, inspired declarer play, defensive sequences that required both partners to find perfect plays without discussion.

The pandemic canceled the 2020 Spingold, the first time in decades the trophy sat unclaimed. Online replacements were organized, but everyone understood it wasn’t the same. The Spingold, like all bridge championships, depends on sitting across from opponents, reading body language, managing pressure in person.

What Makes the Spingold Special

Why does the Spingold matter in a world with world championships, international events, and million-dollar prizes?

The format. Sixty-board knockout matches test everything—technical skill, stamina, emotional control, partnership trust. You can’t coast through a Spingold match. Every board matters.

The field. The Summer NABC attracts the best players in North America and increasingly from around the world. International stars enter the Spingold because winning it means something globally.

The tradition. When you win the Spingold, your name joins a list that includes virtually every great American player of the past ninety years. You’re part of bridge history.

The unpredictability. Knockout formats mean upsets happen. The best team doesn’t always win—the team that plays best over 60 boards wins. That’s why it’s compelling.

Memorable Moments and Matches

1969: The Dallas Aces win their first Spingold, validating Ira Corn’s vision of a professional bridge team that could dominate American competition.

1985: The finals come down to the last board, decided by a defensive sequence that’s still analyzed in bridge classes decades later.

1998: A team of players all under 30 defeats multiple veteran teams to win. The victory signals a generational shift in American bridge.

2007: The championship match requires all 60 boards plus a playoff—the score is tied after regulation. The playoff produces more great bridge and a winner by 3 IMPs.

2015: Scandal breaks as multiple Spingold champions are suspended for alleged cheating. Bridge spends years arguing about evidence and proof.

The Spingold Family Legacy

Nathan Spingold died in 1958, but his family continued supporting the tournament. The Spingold Trophy remains one of bridge’s most beautiful awards—polished silver, engraved with decades of champions, heavy with history.

Winners don’t keep the original. Like the Vanderbilt Cup, the trophy stays with the ACBL, and champions receive replicas. But getting your name engraved on the original matters. It’s permanent. It’s history. Long after you’ve forgotten the specific hands, forgotten the opponents, forgotten the stress, your name remains on that trophy.

The Spingold Today

The Spingold is contested annually at the Summer NABC. The format has evolved over decades—longer matches, different scoring methods, rule changes—but the core remains: knockout teams, win or go home, 60 boards to prove you’re better than the team across the table.

Entry is open to any team willing to pay the fee and navigate qualifying rounds. In practice, the Spingold attracts the best teams in North America. Sponsors back top professionals. Amateur teams enter hoping for magic. Young players chase their first major title. Veterans pursue one more victory before age makes the marathon format too brutal.

The prize money is modest. Nobody plays the Spingold for money. They play because winning it means something—to their careers, to their reputations, to their sense of what they’ve accomplished in bridge.

Comparing Vanderbilt and Spingold

Players argue endlessly about which title matters more. Vanderbilt came first and has name recognition. Spingold has longer matches and arguably stronger fields because it’s held in summer when more players attend.

The truth is they’re both prestigious. Most top players have won both or neither. Winning one and not the other feels incomplete. Winning both puts you among the elite.

And every year, champions of both tournaments dream about being the rare team that wins both in the same year—the Grand Slam of ACBL knockout events. It happens occasionally, and when it does, the team enters bridge legend.

That’s the Spingold. Not quite the Vanderbilt’s prestige, not quite the Bermuda Bowl’s global reach, but a championship that’s defined American bridge excellence for ninety years.

And the trophy still sits in that case, polished and perfect, waiting for the next names to be engraved.

The Spingold Trophy is contested annually at the Summer NABC. Entry is open to all teams, with qualifying rounds for overflow fields. Complete records and historical results are available through ACBL archives.