Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Richard Freeman

passed away two days ago. I played a 16-board set against Freeman(+Nickell) a few years ago and thought he was as sharp an analyst as I've ever played. He played on championship teams in just about every era of bridge. In my opinion, Freeman was an underrated part of the Nickell machine who will be hard to replace.

3 comments:

The Pretender said...

Even though I never really played against all the members of those Nickell teams, for a while I always believed that HamWay was the weakest pair of the bunch and that Freeman was world class solid.

Memphis MOJO said...

Freeman was a good guy, too. He had a good sense of humor and I don't believe I ever saw him get mad.

Jonathan Weinstein said...

Yes, I should have added something about his demeanor -- businesslike but never trying to intimidate. I got a strong sense he was there as much for the beauty of the game as to compete and win -- a bit of a purist. Few can take the *game* seriously without taking *themselves* so seriously they lose all perspective and sense of humor, and he was one. We need all the role models we can get when it comes to that.