David Gold

David was born in Perth, Scotland on September 10th 1979.

He started his career in the sports world as a top junior chess player going on to learn bridge at school aged about 16. He also played a little rubber bridge in London with his father who was an avid bridge player. After deciding that further education and a maths degree wasn't what he wanted to do, David started to get seriously into bridge in 1999 when he had just turned 19. He began working as a host at the St John's Wood Bridge Club, and in 2000 started a partnership with Tom Townsend who had been taught to play as a school boy by David's father!

Tom and David played in the trials later that year reaching the semis and gaining, for David, his first Camrose Cap.  David and Tom won the 2003/2004 Open Trials with John Armstrong and Danny Davies, thus earning the right to compete in the European Teams Championship and the World Team Olympiad. They were part of the team which narrowly losing to Italy in the final of the 2008 World Team Olympiad to capture the silver medal. David's biggest influences have been Tom Townsend, Tony Forrester, Andrew Robson and Zia Mahmood.

David has since formed partnerships with Tony Forrester and David Bakhshi and has represented England with them numerous times in the European Championships (winning a bronze medal in 2014 - later upgraded to a silver medal following the disqualification of the winning Israeli team), Bermuda Bowl (finishing 4th in 2015 after two extremely narrow defeats in the semi-final and bronze medal play-off), and World Olympiad. His most recent international partner was Mike Bell, and they played together in the 2016 and 2017 Camrose Trophy. For the last few years he has been partnering Andrew Black in England and Zia Mahmood in USA.

In 2017 he was part of a team which won a bronze medal in the Transnational competition at the World Teams Championships and he added another bronze in the World Open Teams Championships in 2022. In 2023 he won the prestigious Vanderbilt Trophy in the USA, one of the very few English players to have done so.

David has numerous domestic titles on his bridge CV, including victory in the Gold Cup five times, Premier League eight times, and the 2016, 2017 and 2018 Spring Foursomes. He was the winner of the inaugural Player of the Year Championship for the 2014/15 season.

Read David's Top Table interview - October 2012

Last updated: May 2023

Major International Appearances
European Championships: 2004 2006 2010 2012 2014 and 2016
Bermuda Bowl: 2005 2013 and 2015
World Olympiad: 2004 2008 2012 and 2016
World Youth Team Championships: 2003
European Junior Championships: 2002
Champions Cup: 2004 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019

European Champions’ Cup: 2004 2014 2015 2017 2018 and 2019

Camrose Trophy Selections: 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2019 2022 and 2023

Junior Camrose Selections: 2000 and 2002

Gold Cup winner: 2012 2013 2014 2019 and 2022

Crockfords winner: 2012

Premier League winner: 2008 2011 2013 2014 2016 2017 2018 and 2021

Spring Foursomes winner: 2016 2017 and 2018

Brighton Four Stars Teams winner: 2000 and 2014

Easter Congress Guardian Trophy winner: 2014

National Teams Congress winner: 2015(PAB)

Tollemache Cup winner: 2003 2004 2005 and 2006

Hubert Phillips Bowl winner: 2018

Player of the Year Championship: 2014/15 - 1st; 2015/16 - 4th=; 2016/17 - 5th=; 2017/18 - 2nd=; 2018/19 - 2nd=

Two Star Pairs: 2023