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Profile in Pizazz - Nell Cahn

October 2008

By Amanda Newton

Nell Cahn, 73, won the World Team Championship of Bridge, held in Yokohama, Japan, in 1991. So, how did this mother of two end up taking top honors in a world competition? Well, it is an interesting story that involves boredom and her mother’s fear of polio.

Cahn was never allowed to go to summer camp growing up because polio was a very real and scary possibility. The summer when she was 11, she and a friend were bored and hot. They would lie across the bed in the house in Monroe, which lacked air conditioning, and let the fans blow “the awful, hot air across us,” trying to stay as cool as possible. Looking for a way to pass the time, she asked her mother to teach them how to play bridge and that began her live-long fascination with the game.  

“That is all we wanted to do, both of us, from then on,” Cahn said. “I loved it from the start. I would tell my mom I didn’t have any homework at night and try to get her to have some of her friends come over to play bridge.”

Cahn continued playing bridge through high school and college at the University of Alabama. When the basement of her college sorority house flooded, she packed her bags, came home and soon was engaged to her husband, Abry. Prior to her marriage to Cahn, it is perhaps prophetic, or maybe just curiously coincidental, that her maiden name was Bridge.    

She got married, had two children, and was carpooling with someone who asked her one day if she played bridge. She said she did and they began playing duplicate bridge.

“We were hooked and that was it,” said Cahn. “We were too good to play with the bad people and too bad to play with the good people. We decided that it was time we learned something about the game.”

For the next two years, Cahn and three other women took lessons from a local building contractor who happened to be the number one player in Shreveport at the time.

Bridge has changed so much since then, said Cahn. The systems have gotten more complicated and as they get more complicated, the players are obligated to give full disclosure to their opponents. Bid boxes also changed the game. Now, unless you are playing social bridge, all bids are made through electronic boxes, so you never speak your bids in competition.

“Years ago you could get away with murder,” Cahn said. “Playing a system was almost unheard of. The game has come such a long, long way - some for the better and some for the worse.”

When asked why she loves the game and why she is so good at it, Cahn said her love for the game and her skill goes hand in hand.

“I am a natural at it and it is very easy to be focused on something you love,” she said. “To me it is like someone working a jigsaw puzzle. Each (bridge) hand is a puzzle and to me the fun is putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Through what (each person) bids and negative inferences, you figure out high cards. It is what makes some people better than others. I was told years ago by one of the top players in the world that if you aren’t a queen finder then you will never win tournaments. Some people are better at it than others.”

Winning the World Championship of Bridge was “the absolute ultimate” of her bridge experience, Cahn said.

“It wasn’t just winning, it was the fact we were doing it for our country. It was without a doubt one of the most emotional experiences of my life. It was not about me. I wanted to win the medal for the United States.”

After her win, Cahn earned enough points to become an American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) Grand Life Master, the highest rank in the ACBL. It is an elite group, but Cahn said her 13,000 or so points are “just a drop in the bucket” compared to others. She doesn’t want to play 360 days a year, she said, so she won’t rack up huge points numbers. She plays four or five tournaments a year now, after taking a few years off to care for her mother.

Her mother, the one who started her on the road to a bridge world championship, was a New Orleans resident who became a Katrina evacuee. Right after the hurricane, Cahn and her family could not locate her mother. One guess as to what she was doing.

“She and her bridge game had checked into the Windsor Court and they were playing bridge through Katrina,” Cahn recalled with a laugh.

After her mother passed away in 2007, Cahn got back into tournament play with a friend from Monroe who was herself just getting back into the game. Cahn’s one prerequisite for playing with the friend was that they would only travel to tournaments that were fun.

Cahn recently returned from tournaments in Las Vegas and Omaha. In Omaha, she sat at a table and played Warren Buffett. Buffett, an avid bridge player, was actually coached by Cahn’s former world championship teammate.

Like Buffett, who is known for his philanthropy, Cahn believes in giving back. She has always told those who approach her about teaching them that if she does take them on as students, they must agree to teach at least one person the game.

“They have all done that. It is a dying art and we have to do what we can to keep it alive.”

Spoken like a true world champion, with a love and passion for the game.