Bridge Feat

Although most of the crack U.S. bridge players are comparatively young men, few sports have suffered as little interference from the war as tournament contract. Last week a full quota of stars showed up as usual in Manhattan for the two big annual tournaments--the Masters' Individual and the Vanderbilt Cup. There was a sprinkling of players in uniform (corporal to lieut. colonel) all slightly out of practice. Average age of the entrants: about 33. The winner's age: 33.

Most coveted title in U.S. bridge is the Masters' Individual Championship, which is contested each year by 36 of the nation's best players, picked to compete by a committee. No player has ever won twice. True to tradition, the six former champions entered in last week's tournament finished far out of the running. Winner and new champion was a young War Department statistician, sharp-nosed Alvin Roth, who has played bridge for only six years.

It turned out to be Alvin Roth's week, for after winning the Individual he went on to win the Vanderbilt Cup too, as a member of the victorious team-of-four. Honors for the week's most spectacular play, however, went not to Alvin Roth but to a pudgy, cigar-smoking teammate, Fred Kaplan, who turned the trick of bidding and making a grand slam in hearts with only three hearts in his hand.

An irrepressible psychic bidder, Kaplan opened the bidding with a heart; when his partner finally raised him to six hearts, Kaplan nonchalantly bid the seventh.

Since the opponents' trumps broke evenly, the hand was cold for top score on the board.

Kaplan blandly explained that when his partner supported his heart bid, he deduced at once that North must have at least four trumps to the Ace King. His stab-in-the-dark psychic landed the pair in the highest makable contract. Most teams wound up with a safe but unprofitable bid of seven diamonds. Players who got to seven spades, an apparently more logical contract than hearts on South's holding, went down on West's inevitable opening lead of the club Ace, which forced the declarer to ruff and eventually gave West a trick in spades.

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