Contract Bridge

Famous Hand

The scene was the 1947 Vanderbilt team championship. It was the last hand of the 36-board semifinal round match, and Dick Frey (South) had left with his team ahead after the 35th board to catch the 1:15 a.m. train for home. Jigger Dornbusch, a reserve member of the team, took Frey’s place for the final deal.

Dornbusch was unaware that his North-South adversaries at the other table had already bid and made six hearts and that all he had to do to win the match was to duplicate this result. Instead, he undertook a grand slam.

Dornbusch won the club lead in his hand, played the ace of trump (to guard against West’s holding the singleton queen), led a club to the queen and took a trump finesse. The finesse succeeded, but he could not avoid losing a trump trick and went down one.

Had Dornbusch taken two trump finesses through East — that is, without cashing the ace of trump first — he would have been 2,310 points better off. He also would have won the match instead of losing it.

It is doubtful whether, in the long history of bridge, there has ever been such a dramatic combination of circumstances revolving about one deal. Dornbusch became the goat of the year by playing a single hand! Moreover, the hand itself proved to be very instructive because, though the ace-of-hearts safety play looked attractive, it was in fact a terrible blunder.

In attempting to guard against West holding the singleton queen, Dornbusch in effect neglected to guard against West’s holding the singleton 7, 6, 4 or 2. These four singletons were four times as likely to occur as the singleton queen, so Dornbusch’s ace play at trick two was decidedly against the odds.