The passing of international bridge player Jane Preddy marks the end of an era. She was almost certainly the last person ever to partner the legendary Skid Simon, author of Why you Lose at Bridge. Simon died in 1947 aged just 44, but given his cigarette consumption and his habit of walking across busy roads with a book barely an inch from his head — Simon was very short-sighted — even living that long was a small miracle.
Preddy took to bridge at the age of 11 in the company of her older brother John Watson-Williams, taught by her grandmother while in air raid shelters during the Blitz. Initially they were a threesome but quite soon found a fourth and played whenever the bombers appeared.
She would play truant at school to play rubber bridge at Ace of Clubs, Bristol. Later, still in her teens, she would play at Crockford’s Club in London with such luminaries of the game as Terence Reese. Reese, a brilliantly clear author, was perhaps most famous for the cheating scandal in the World Bridge Championships in 1965.
He was not known for his generosity. One evening he told the impressionable young Preddy that he would take her out to dinner the next night. Preddy duly made herself look pretty with high expectations of a long evening wining and dining, whereupon Reese eventually broke up from his bridge game and they walked a couple of blocks in silence before passing a hot dog stall. “This’ll do,” he said gruffly.
She played much canasta with Reese and her late husband William Preddy. One distinguished member of Crockfords, Tony Priday, had a pretty successful run and was surprised to find very little in his account; his winnings had been credited to Preddy (a confusion over surnames). It is unclear whether he ever got them back.
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After many national successes, including the Hubert Phillips in 1947 and the Portland Bowl with her brother as part of the team, Preddy stopped playing completely to raise four daughters and her son. One daughter, Kay, also became an international bridge player.
Preddy returned to bridge in 1980. Her international career was revitalised and, among other successes, she represented Great Britain in the World Championships in Japan in 1991.
In the early 1980s she created the West of England Bridge Club, which flourishes to this day. The afternoon 25p-per-hundred rubber game attracted such players as the Times columnist Andrew Robson, who did a large portion of his 10,000 hours while nominally a student at Bristol University, often playing well into the night and the next day with Preddy and other internationals such as Marc Smith and David Carlisle, whom Preddy lived with for the past 30 years and married in 2003.
Preddy was a bridge teacher par excellence. She championed a simple approach to bidding. She was well ahead of her time, teaching that all 12-14 point balanced hands, including those with a five-card major, should be opened One Notrump and she attracted a very devoted following.
She retired from Bristol to Kent in the late 1980s, where she took up golf, but was tempted to co-manage the Acol Club in London in 1993 with Robson — a sentimental journey for Preddy as she, uniquely, was around in the 1940s when the Acol system of bridge was being devised.
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Preddy returned to Kent, then moved to Aberystwyth where her husband gained a PhD, and then to Essex where he became a school teacher.
They both enjoyed travelling but were never conventional, he reporting that she frequently tried to kill him. She loved to recount these experiences, such as in Malaysia when a cow careered into the car. The car was written off and a trip to the police station followed. Eventually, they left in a new car, but her continued erratic driving induced Carlisle to continue the journey on foot despite a prominent sign saying “Beware Elephants” — the lesser danger, he calculated.
Preddy is survived by her husband, David Carlisle, and four daughters and a son of her previous marriage.
Jane Preddy, international bridge player and teacher, was born on January 31, 1928. She died on February 24, 2011, aged 83