Sport: At the Drake

Sidney Lenz was not there because he was sick with arthritis. Milton C. Work was not there—he does not risk his whist reputation in bridge tournaments. Wilbur C. Whitehead was detained in Manhattan on business. But bald-headed Maurice Maschke, Republican national committeeman from Ohio, donor of the Cleveland Whist Club Trophy, was there. So were a 60-lb. player (Phillip Harold Sims) and a 130-lb. player (Baron Waldemar von Zeltwitz). Present too was that formidable family, young Mrs. Ely Culbertson and her husband, the editor of The Bridge World. Reputed one of the best and certainly one of the best-looking bridgers in the U. S., she plays quietly, cheerfully, is not ashamed to hesitate. He is dapper, U. S.-born, Sorbonne-educated. They make bridge pay them $40,000 a year. With some 300 others, in a cream-colored, marble-floored room on the mezzanine of the Drake Hotel, Chicago, they played mornings, afternoons, and evenings for four days, to decide the auction and contract bridge championships of the U. S. Tournament bridge players never have any luck. Luck is eliminated by having every table play, successively, the same hands. As soon as one hand has been finished the cards are put back separately in a numbered board which is passed along to the next table. The pairs move around the room the opposite way from the boards. When the cups were handed out, handsome Mrs. Culbertson and her partner, Mrs. Olga Hilliard, were given two for being the best women’s auction pair. To Ely Culbertson also went a cup for winning, with Bridge-player Sims, the championship for men’s auction pair. To a Chicago foursome went the high and heavy cup for the best team-of-four contract players. Representing the local Auction Bridge Club, they were: Louis Joseph Haddad, Max Moses Cohen, Robert Walter Halpin and Nils Morris Wester, who not long ago wrote a book called Auction to Contract.