REMARKABLE CARD DEAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22709, 23 October 1935, Page 10

REMARKABLE CARD DEAL

THIRTEEN CARDS OF SUIT TO EACH OF FOUR PLAYERS (From Our Own Correspondent 1 SYDNEY, October 16. That card miracle —a deal in which each hand contains the 13 cards of a suit — was not only realised, but surpassed, in a game of bridge played at the home of Mr and Mrs John Guthrie Campbell, Balaclava (Melbourne). Each of the four players was dealt a complete .suit. Mr and Mrs Campbell were playing a friendly game of auction with Mr and Mrs W. A. Skinner, of Carnegie, the two women playing the two men. Mr Skinner shuffled the two packs, Mrs Campbell cut them, and Mr Campbell dealt. Mr Campbell found he had 13 clubs, and he called six clubs. Mrs Campbell had 13 hearts and bid six hearts. Mr Skinner had 13 diamonds, but before he could call anything his wife, the fourth player, threw her cards on the table and said: "Look what I've got. Thirteen spades! " So the game was not played. " We have been playing with the 6ame two packs of cards all the evening," Mrs Campbell said. " None of us are very good players, and my husband would not have known how to deal such cards if he had tried." Bridge mathematicians have calculated the chance of being dealt 13 cards of a suit as one in 158,000,000,000, while the odds against the four players each being dealt a complete suit is estimated to be so enormous as to be incapable of calculation. According to the Encyclopaedia of Bridge, there are only two instances on record of a hand of this kind being dealt. A witnessed document testifies that at the Monyauk Club, Brooklyn, on June 20, 1894, Mr Anderson, dealing the cards from a well-shuffled pack, dealt Mr Young 13 hearts, Mr Lyles 13 clubs, Mr Hodenby 13 'diamonds, and himself 13 spades. It is also asserted that each player was dealt 13 cards of a suit at the United Services Club at Calcutta in January, 1888. Those at the table were Mr Justice Norris and three physicians, and they all vouched for the truth of the statement. There are many instances oil record of one player being dealt 13 cards of a suit.