Paul Soloway, 66; five-time world bridge champion

Paul Soloway, a master bridge player who was a five-time world champion and held more than two dozen national titles, has died. He was 66.

Soloway, who had diabetes, died Monday at a Seattle-area hospital of complications from an infection, said his sister, Alison Greenberg.

Bill Pollack, vice president of the U.S. Bridge Federation, called Soloway “a great champion and a true gentleman of the game.”

“Both his accomplishments and his personal demeanor set him apart,” Pollack said in an e-mail.

The bridge world nicknamed the keen competitor “Win ‘em all Paul,” a reflection of the more than 1,000 regional titles he held.

He won his first national title in 1965 and was on the Nick Nickell team that has been the most successful in the world during the last decade.

No one had more master points -- the system used to measure bridge achievement -- than Soloway. At the time of his death, he had almost 65,512, which put him more than 6,000 points ahead of his nearest competitor, according to the American Contract Bridge League.

“His amazing record of master points will someday be broken, but his feats of the last years will be impossible to match,” Jay Baum, the league’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Twice, Soloway had undergone open-heart surgery. A month after having a quadruple-heart bypass, he traveled to Bermuda and won the 2000 world team championship known as the Bermuda Bowl.

Paul Michael Soloway was born Oct. 10, 1941, in Hollywood and raised in Beverly Hills. His father sold real estate, and his mother was a catering manager.

While studying computer science at what is now Cal State Northridge, Soloway discovered bridge.

The game appealed to him because it was “a little bit psychology, a little bit poker and a lot of puzzle-solving or problem-solving,” Soloway told the Seattle Times in 1993.

His parents had encouraged him to take up bridge as a social outlet, but “for many years, they bitterly regretted their suggestion” after the college graduate became a professional player in his 20s, Soloway told the Los Angeles Times in 1974.

He joked that his mother and father called him “My son, the bridge bum” but added: “It’s turned out all right.”

In addition to his sister, who lives in Los Angeles, Soloway is survived by his wife, Pam Pruitt of Mill Creek, Wash.

Memorial donations may be made to the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation, www.diabetesresearch.org.

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valerie.nelson@latimes.com