Bob Hamman

Robert David "Bob" Hamman (born August 6, 1938 in Pasadena, California) is an American professional bridge player, among the greatest players of all time. He is from Dallas, Texas.

Hamman and Bobby Wolff played as partners for nearly three decades on teams that challenged for major trophies in North America and often for world championships. Representing the United States (from about 1980, previously North America) they won eight world championships for national teams, the 1988 World Team Olympiad and seven Bermuda Bowls spanning 1970 to 1995. For the last they were members of Nick Nickell's professional team, where Hamman remained a fixture through the current two-year cycle and won three more Bermuda Bowls in partnership with Paul Soloway and Zia Mahmood.

Beginning 2012/2013, Nickell has replaced Bobby Hamman and Zia Mahmood with Bobby Levin–Steve Weinstein. A new pairing for Hamman with Bart Bramley was announced in July but never secured, according to a November report that Hamman will play with Justin Lall. Justin was a silver medalist in the 2011 Bermuda Bowl and is the son of Hemant Lall, Hamman's partner in 2007.

Hamman first qualified for a world championship in the open category by winning the American Contract Bridge League international trials in 1963, for the 1964 World Team Olympiad. That was a "pairs trial" from which the winning pair and two of the three runners-up would be selected as a 6-person team.

Dallas businessman Ira Corn established the first full-time professional team in 1968, the Dallas Aces, later simply Aces. Hamman joined in 1969, as the sixth player, and established a partnership with Billy Eisenberg. Following the retirement of Italy's Blue team, they won the as North America representative and repeated in 1971 as defending champion. He has won 12 world championships and 50 North American championships. Hamman and Brent Manley wrote his autobiography At the Table: My Life and Times, published in 1994 (). He was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1999; a version of his citation that reports 23,219 masterpoints to March 2001 also reads:

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