Duke of Cumberland Hand
The Duke of Cumberland hand (from English hand , dt. As much as hand ) is a famous card distribution in whist or bridge , comparable to the immortal game in chess .
history
This distribution owes its name to the following anecdote : When Ernst August , a son of the English King George III. and Duke of Cumberland , who received a very good hand in a whist game in Bath , his teammates told him that they had arranged the cards in a certain order and that despite all the strengths of his hand he could not win a single trick . The Duke of Cumberland is said to have bet £ 20,000 against it, which he promptly lost.
Ian Fleming created a literary memorial for the Duke of Cumberland Hand in the novel Moonraker : After James Bond found his opponent Sir Hugo Drax cheating in a bridge game at the Blades Club in London , Bond swapped the pack of cards and then divided the cards from one sorted accordingly Package so that Sir Hugo may receive the Duke of Cumberland's sheet.
The Duke of Cumberland Hand has come down to us in several variations. Ely Culbertson is mentioned later as the source of the special variant described in the novel .
The game
The distribution of cards
| North | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| James Bond | |||||||||||||||||||
| ♠ | - | ||||||||||||||||||
| ♥ | - | ||||||||||||||||||
| ♦ | Q | 8th | 7th | 6th | 5 | 4th | 3 | 2 | |||||||||||
| ♣ | A. | Q | 10 | 8th | 4th | ||||||||||||||
| west | east | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sir Hugo Drax | Max Meyer | ||||||||||||||||||
| ♠ | A. | K | Q | J | ♠ | 6th | 5 | 4th | 3 | 2 | |||||||||
| ♥ | A. | K | Q | J | ♥ | 10 | 9 | 8th | 7th | 2 | |||||||||
| ♦ | A. | K | ♦ | J | 10 | 9 | |||||||||||||
| ♣ | K | J | 9 | ♣ | - | ||||||||||||||
| south | |||||||||||||||||||
| M. | |||||||||||||||||||
| ♠ | 10 | 9 | 8th | 7th | |||||||||||||||
| ♥ | 6th | 5 | 4th | 3 | |||||||||||||||
| ♦ | - | ||||||||||||||||||
| ♣ | 7th | 6th | 5 | 3 | 2 | ||||||||||||||
The auction
North opens the bid as a divider with the bid 7 ♣ ; East and South pass, West doubles , North gives recontra, whereupon East, South and West pass.
The attack
East attacks with the ♦ J - it doesn't matter which card East plays, North can fulfill the contract in any case.
The implementation of the game
| 1. | ♦ J | ♣ 2 | ♦ K | ♦ 2 |
| 2. | ♣ 3 | ♣ 9 | ♣ 10 | x |
| 3. | ♦ 3 | ♦ 9 | ♣ 5 | ♦ A |
| 4th | ♣ 6 | ♣ J | ♣ Q | x |
| 5. | ♣ A | x | ♣ 7 | ♣ K |
| 6th | ♦ Q | ♦ 10 | ||
| 7th | ♦ 8 | |||
| 8th. | ♦ 7 | |||
| 9. | ♦ 6 | |||
| 10. | ♦ 5 | |||
| 11. | ♦ 4 | |||
| 12. | ♣ 8 | |||
| 13. | ♣ 4 |
If East attacks with spades or cœur, North tricks with ♣ 4, continues with ♦ 2 and fulfills the contract in the same way.
Note : At the time of the Duke of Cumberland - he died in 1851 - there was no bridge, so according to the anecdote, whist was not played , but bridge . The Duke sat on West, and South opened a low hit card as a divider to determine the trump suit . This difference between the Whist and the Bridge variation is of course insignificant, since East-West cannot take a stab even if attacked from West.
literature
- A. Hertefeld: Illustrirtes ( sic !) Whist book , Breslau 1882
- Ian Fleming: Moonraker , 1955, reprint: Penguin Books, 2002
- Fritz Beck: Lerne Bridge , Vienna, 1977
- Ulrich Auhagen: The big book from Bridge , 1990