William S. Root (December 12, 1923 – March 18, 2002) was an American professional bridge player, teacher, and writer. He was from Boca Raton, Florida.
Root was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1997. 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."
Life
Root was born in New York City and raised in Miami, Florida. He died at age 79 in Boca Raton, Florida.
Root appeared as himself on the November 6, 1961 episode of the CBS game show To Tell the Truth.
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.
Win the opening lead of 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 . If the clubs did not split favorably, declarer could still try to run the diamonds using dummy's to get back into declarer's hand.
Bridge accomplishments
Honors ACBL Hall of Fame, 1997"Induction by Year" . Hall of Fame. ACBL. Retrieved 2014-12-20.
Wins North American Bridge Championships (14) Vanderbilt (4) 1968, 1983, 1986, 1995 Spingold (3) 1961, 1966, 1967 Chicago (now Reisinger) (1) 1957 Reisinger (5) 1967, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1990 Men's Pairs (1) 1953
Runners-up Bermuda Bowl (1) 1967 World Open Team Olympiad (1) 1968 North American Bridge Championships (9) Spingold (3) 1963, 1974, 1978 Reisinger (1) 1966 Grand National Teams (1) 1992 Men's Board-a-Match Teams (1) 1963 North American Men's Swiss Teams (1) 1984 Life Master Pairs (1) 1995 Open Pairs (1) 1966 United States Bridge Championships (4) Open Team Trials (3) 1984, 1987, 1992 Open Pair Trials (1) 1967
Books
Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), ; Frederick Muller (London). Both 154 pp. ——— (1972) [c1971]. New Contract Bridge Outlines on Standard Bidding. Crown Publishers (New York). 64 pages. 96 pp. Crown, ; Three Rivers Press (New York), ; (1992) CrownTrade Paperbacks, . All 244 pp. Crown, (hardcover), (softcover); 1995, Three Rivers, . 216 pp. 309 pp. 410 pp. 281 pp.
References
External links