Blue Team (bridge)

The Blue Team (Italian: "Squadra azzurra") represented Italy in international contract bridge tournaments, winning sixteen world titles from 1957 through 1975.

In 1951 Italy won its first European championship (Open teams) and lost to the United States for the second Bermuda Bowl, on home ground in Naples.

United States teams were considered the best in the world after the war, and they won two more Bermuda Bowls for North America against Europe.

The players were now Walter Avarelli, Giorgio Belladonna, Eugenio Chiaradia, Massimo d'Alelio, Pietro Forquet, and Guglielmo Siniscalco.

A large part of the Blue Team's success lay in new and inventive bidding systems, which were often deemed quite strange, especially by conservative US circles.

When young, inventive and cocky Garozzo joined the team in 1960, he further developed with Forquet the Neapolitan system into the Blue Club, which gained worldwide popularity in later years.

One of those featured a deal from the 1968 Bermuda Bowl in which Camillo Pabis Ticci led the ace of clubs against a four spades contract, holding ♠ J84 ♥ 9 ♦ A10763 ♣ A986.

According to a review by John Swanson,[6] which gives the opponent's bidding as 1♠ [South], 2♥, 2♠, 3♠, 4♠ and concludes that Pabis Ticci's explanation of the unusual lead was "patently absurd".

[10] Journalist Bruce Keidan reported that partners Gianfranco Facchini and Sergio Zucchelli were touching each other's shoes under the table in an apparent attempt to relay information about their hands.

In particular he noted many deviations from their announced bidding system, liberal use of "off shape" takeout doubles and suspiciously high rate of killing opening leads.

the author also unearthed many suspicious hands as reported at the time, which were removed from the later more formal publications, in what looks like an intentional cover-up[14] From 1964 to 1969 and for the 1972 comeback, the team comprised Giorgio Belladonna – Walter Avarelli; Benito Garozzo – Pietro Forquet; and Camillo Pabis Ticci – Massimo D'Alelio