Martin Hoffman
Superbly quick bridge champion who took on Omar Sharif but struggled with Holocaust memories
MARTIN HOFFMAN, who has died aged 88, survived the Holocaust to become a champion bridge player. His first experience of card games was when he was 19. He was living in Finchley, North London, with a family who taught him to play whist. He was fascinated by the game and could hardly wait to finish work, have a quick meal and get to the club. One day some Russian friends were a player short for a rubber of bridge and asked him to play.
Hoffman found bridge even more exciting than whist, especially the part where you try to work out the opponent’s holding. In the early 1960s he became a bridge host at the Green Street club in Mayfair. As a host, he would play to make up a table of four and was allowed to keep a share of his winnings.
It was not until 1965 that he played tournament bridge for the first time. He took part in the weekly duplicate at the Grand Slam club, not even knowing that it was a qualifying heat of the National Pairs.
He and his bridge partner Joe Moskal went on to win the event by a big margin, at which point Hoffman realised this was a game he could excel at, as well as enjoy.
He was a prodigious winner of big pairs events at home and abroad – in Paris, Monte Carlo, Deauville, Geneva and Tel Aviv. In England his wins included the Life Masters pairs, National Pairs, Guardian Pairs and Evening Standard Pairs. He did occasionally play in team events, winning Crockfords, the Spring Foursomes, the Tollemache and the Hubert Phillips.
He was a superbly quick card player and normally calm, but under pressure he would sometimes lose his temper.
In the final of the World Pairs in 1982 in Biarritz he was playing with Colin Simpson. As is customary at top-level games, screens were placed across the tables to obscure partners’ facial expressions and speed of bidding, with flaps in them so that the cards could be seen.
After Simpson misplayed the final board of a set – a critical mistake with the play of the cards – Hoffman opened the flap and told him off. Half a minute later Hoffman looked around the side of the screen and castigated Simpson again. After a further 30 seconds, Hoffman stood up to continue the tongue-lashing. At this point Simpson went round to Hoffman’s side of the table and knelt down, promising not to make the same mistake again, whereupon the rest of the players burst into laughter and cheering.
Martin Joseph Hoffman was born in Prague on November 15 1929, the second of four children of parents who ran a provision business. After a conventional start to his schooling, he underwent strict religious instruction with an Orthodox community in the Carpathian Mountains, which he was convinced improved his memory. When he was 10 his parents were taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp. He never saw them again.
Like thousands of Jews, Hoffman was resettled to the ghetto. From there he was transported to various concentration camps, initially Birkenau then Monowitz. On the advice of another prisoner he claimed to be 18 when he was in fact only 14. This meant that he was of working age, which saved him from the gas chamber. He then survived the death march to Buchenwald and was liberated in April 1945.
After a brief return to Prague, Hoffman came to Britain, staying at first in Scotland and then the Lake District. In London he found work as a diamond cutter in Hatton Garden, on one occasion presenting his work to Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth. Eventually business in the diamond trade eased off and he drifted between jobs, often haunted by his memories of the Holocaust. He endured a battle with gambling addiction that involved a brush with the East End underworld. There was only one escape. “When I played bridge, horrors that haunted me constantly at other times would slip away from my mind for a while,” he wrote. Soon he was playing professionally.
Hoffman also enjoyed writing about the game. Titles published under his own name include Hoffman on Pairs Play and More Tales of Hoffman. He also wrote a memoir, Bridging Two Worlds, which includes a chilling account of his time in the concentration camps and has a foreword by Omar Sharif, with whom he played bridge in the 1960s.
In his later years Hoffman divided his time between London and Florida.
Martin Hoffman married Audrey Cookson, a bridge teacher, in 1977. She survives him.
Martin Hoffman, born November 15 1929, died May 15 2018