{"id":8599,"date":"2025-10-04T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/?p=8599"},"modified":"2026-05-18T14:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:05:12","slug":"he-is-of-the-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/he-is-of-the-ages\/","title":{"rendered":"He is of the Ages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Chemla, one of the legendary figures of French Bridge, passed away at the beginning of October. His titles included three World Championships; the Generali World Masters Individual and the Sunday Times pairs championship. He was affectionately known as the&nbsp;<em>enfant terrible&nbsp;<\/em>and the&nbsp;<em>Cigar<\/em>. From the many anecdotes with which he is associated these two illustrate his wonderful sense of humour:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Often frustrated at what he perceived as the misguided efforts of his teammates, on one occasion, having endured a series of what he believed to be below par efforts, he could contain himself no longer, exclaiming,&nbsp;<em>Five against one, five against one, five against one \u2013 Every event, every match, it is five against one.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pausing to catch his breath he added,&nbsp;<em>Yes of course I can still win, but I need a little luck\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Arriving in Morocco he noticed that his partner Michel Lebel, completing his landing card, had written under profession, \u201c<em>Professional Bridge player\/writer.<\/em>\u201d Having landed, the passport officer looks at Chemla (over one hundred pounds of weight) with surprise and says, \u201c<em>You claim to be a ballerina of the Opera of Paris!?<\/em>\u201d \u201c<em>Certainly<\/em>\u201d replies Paul (pointing to his colleague), \u201c<em>if Mr. Lebel is a professional bridge writer, I am a ballerina of the Opera.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bridgerama-plus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ChemlaPaul_de-Harissa.com_.jpg\" alt=\"photo de Paul Chemla\" class=\"wp-image-16954\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u00a9 D.R.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Chemla, one of the legendary figures of French Bridge, passed away at the beginning of October. His titles included three World Championships; the Generali&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":11436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"level":[],"class_list":["post-8599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8599"},{"taxonomy":"level","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridge.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/level?post=8599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}