Background
Ottlik was born and died in Budapest.
mathematician translator writer
Ottlik was born and died in Budapest.
He attended the military school at Kőszeg and Budapest, and studied mathematics and physics at Budapest University 1931–1935.
According to an American obituary bridge column, he was known in Hungary as "the ultimate authority on Hungarian prose". After a brief career on Hungarian radio, he was a secretary of Hungarian Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association Club from 1945 to 1957. He translated mainly from English (Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, John Osborne, Evelyn Waugh).
And German (Thomas Mann, G Keller, Stefan Zweig).
In a bridge column three month"s after Ottlik"s death, Alan Truscott placed him "among the strongest candidates" for "the bridge writer with the greatest creativity in terms of card-play theory". His 1979 book Adventures in Card Play, written with Hugh Kelsey, introduced and developed many new concepts (such as Backwash squeeze and Entry-shifting squeeze).
According to Truscott it "opened new frontiers" in defence as well as declarer play. In his 1995 obituary of Kelsey, Truscott wrote that it "broke new ground in many technical areas and is still considered the most advanced book on the play of the cards." An American survey of bridge experts in 2007 ranked it third on a list of their all-time favourites, nearly thirty years after its first publication.
Géza personally intervened to obtain the release of Vas" mother from arrest.
If he had not done so, she would have been sent on a death march towards Germany. Foreign this, the couple were honoured on 4 June 1998 by Yad Vashem as people Righteous Among the Nations.
Gyöngyi faced down a group of Arrow Cross Party members who had broken into the apartment to search for the Jew allegedly hiding there. They left without discovering Vas, who survived World World War World War II
He was a passionate bridge player and advanced theoretician.