Super-Bridge

Some years ago polished Card Shark Ely Culbertson, scrawny titan of contract bridge, talked his way into the Tall Story Club. His tall story: a nightmarish bridge game in which Satan sat at his left. When Ely, holding the red & black dream hand-- spades AKQJ, hearts AKQ, diamonds AKQ, clubs AKQ--bid a grand slam in no trump, Satan doubled. When Ely redoubled, Satan grinned impishly, reeled off a hellish new green suit to take all the tricks.

Last week U. S. card players realized they might have to deal with a green suit in their waking moments. From Vienna, via London, had come a new 65-card, five-suit bridge deck,* the added 13-card suit dubbed "royals" and embossed with a green emblem patterned after Britain's Imperial Crown. Thought up one summer night last year by Austrian Gamester Walther Marseille, an ascetic-looking Ph.D. who has trouble getting to sleep, five-suit or super-bridge, got its real impetus at the British Industries Fair last week, when the King & Queen bought two decks while the Duke of Kent looked on. Remarked the Duke, setting the test for future skeptics: "Bridge is already sufficiently difficult, without adding further complications."

Rules for Dr. Marseille's five-suit game vary considerably from those of orthodox contract bridge. Each player gets 16 cards, the extra one being faced up by the dealer for disposition by the player who gets the bid. The "book" (in bridge, six tricks) becomes eight in super-bridge. In the bidding, "royals" rank between spades and no trumps. Club and diamond tricks above book count 20 points, heart and spade tricks 25, royals 30, no trumps 40. Game level is raised from 100 to 120 points. Three slams are possible: little slam, or six tricks over book; grand slam, seven over book; and super-slam, all 16 tricks.

Old Master Culbertson, still wary of green suits, called super-bridge a false alarm, pointed out that "most people do not even know how to handle four suits, and three-suit bridge has a better chance for success than five-suit, bridge." But newspaper editors, tiring of wire stories from all ends of the earth telling of miraculous one-suit hands being dealt to people with weak hearts, welcomed a card game in which a one-suit hand was impossible. Other card players found the possibilities of the new deck intriguing. To the poker crowd, for example, it opened bright vistas of more easily filled straights, green flushes, and a new one-eyed jack for the wild games.

*For several years U. S. card experts have experimented with five-suit games. One such, devised last summer by A. A. Jordan of Virginia Beach, Va., has a crown-emblem fifth suit.

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