Hej,

Ytterligare en Culbertson match från 30-talet för dom som är intresserade av historisk bridge. Förmodligen Culbertsons viktigaste match.

Mitt inlägg från Bridgewinnners:

It was played as rubbers. Sydney Lenz was offered two choices, a team-four-match or rubber.

Lenz selected rubber, probably because he thought he would have a better chance to win.

They played 150 rubbers, totally 879 deals!

I have made a video with a selection of 109 deals. All deals are commented by either Culbertson, Oswald Jacoby or Albert Moorehead, chief referee.

It is the bidding that is the important part of the deals, but there are some nice plays too.

I have created a new section on TheBridgeChannel.se for this event with LIN-files, systems used and more.

For those who are interested to know more about the match I recommended the book ”The man that made Contract Bridge” by John Clay.

There is a chapter about the match with 25 pages. There are also chapters about the Beasley and Buller matches.

The book is available at the Internet Archive and can be read online.
The first part of the match took place at Hotel Chatham, in Culbertsons drawing room.

The match was closely followed by that times media, radio and newspapers.

Here is one story from the book:

Jacques Curley, a wrestling impresario and promotor of Madison Square Gardens, put in an appearance on 15 December, took one look at the assembled throngs, nearly wept when he realized that no admission charges were being made and rushed up to Culbertson to ask him why he had not thought of putting the whole show on at Madison Square Gardens. Curley described how he would have put the players in a big glass enclosure and have had huge scoreboards for the estimated hundreds of paying customers. But Culbertson told him that he saw the match quite differently. His audience was locked away in the privacy of their own homes, listening to the radio, reading the newspapers and watching every move. They the silent millions who were waiting to see the outcome of the match before committing themselves. What Culbertson stood to gain in this way potentially far exceeded anything he could get from putting on a short-lived spectacle at Madison Square Gardens!

The so called Official System lost the match against Culbertson system. But there are some parts that survived and are used today, 1-2-3-4 points used instead of honour tricks used in Culbertsons system and the 2 Club game forcing opening, but it was not used in the match. They used opening at the three level as game forcing!

This will probably be the last old match i will do. The circle is closed - I am back at the thirtes where I started two years ago with the Beasley match.

Björn