Sharif said bridge was his personal passion and at one time was ranked among the world’s top 50 contract bridge players.
At the 1964 World Bridge Olympiad he represented the United Arab Republic bridge squad and in 1968 he was playing captain of the Egyptian team in the Olympiad.
In 1967 he formed the Omar Sharif Bridge Circus to showcase bridge to the world and invited professional players including members of the Italian Blue team, which won 16 World championship titles, to tour and promote the game via exhibition matches including one watched by the Shah of Iran. Touring through Europe, the Circus attracted thousands of spectators who watched the matches via Bridge-O-Rama, a new technology (and predecessor to the modern-day VuGraph) that displayed bidding and cardplay on television monitors. Players included Benito Garozzo, (considered by many as the greatest bridge player of all time) plus his Italian compatriots Pietro Forquet and Giorgio Belladonna and Frenchman Claude Delmouly.
In 1970, Sharif and the circus went to London’s famous Piccadilly Hotel for an 80-rubber match against British experts Jeremy Flint and Jonathan Cansino. The stakes were £1 per point, huge stakes even by today’s standards. The event was to present bridge as a rich, exciting spectacle and to break through into television to bring the game within the reach of millions. The Circus ultimately won the match by 5,470 points, but Sharif still incurred a net loss after paying all related expenses.
The Circus, under the management of Mike Ledeen, toured Canada and the U.S. in 1970—71. Sharif’s team joined with the Dallas Aces for a seven-city tour of Chicago, Winnipeg, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Dallas, Detroit and Philadelphia. In each city, a team of local experts participated in the exhibition.
In 1975, sponsored by the Lancia division of Fiat, Sharif and members of the Italian Blue Team faced off in four challenge matches against American teams. Sharif’s team won in Chicago, but was defeated in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
The Omar Sharif World Individual Championship held in 1990 offered the largest total purse ($200,000) in the history of bridge.
In 1997, he was a member of the Committee of Honour for the Bermuda Bowl on the first time it was held in an Arab Country, Tunisia. He competed in a transnational team (with French, German and Lebanese players) and finished 11th. In 1999 he played in a French senior team at the European Championships in Malta, finishing second. In 2000 at Maastricht, he joined Egypt’s senior team, finishing in ninth place.
With Charles Goren and later Tannah Hirsch, Sharif contributed to a syndicated newspaper bridge column for the Chicago Tribune.
He was also both author and co-author of several books on bridge and licensed his name to a bridge video game, Omar Sharif Bridge, initially released in an MS-DOS version and Amiga version in 1992 and is still sold in Windows and mobile platform versions. He was also the hand analyst commentator for the Epson worldwide bridge contests.
Sharif was a regular in casinos in France.
By 2000 Sharif had stopped playing bridge entirely. Having once proudly declared the game his passion, he now considered it an addiction: “I didn’t want to be a slave to any passion anymore. I gave up card playing altogether, even bridge and gambling.” Sharif, however, continued to license his name to bridge software games, and co-authored a book with bridge writer David Bird, “Omar Sharif Talks Bridge”. Written in 2004, it includes some of his most famous deals and bridge stories.
