Worst Hand

We have all picked up bad hands, but Linda Stahl of Chagrin Falls recently picked up a doozy.  Linda and her husband Jim were playing in the Sarasota-Manatee Regional on February 19 and Linda had this hand as west.

That west hand makes a Yarborough look good. The odds of getting a Yarborough are 1,827 to 1. But the odds of picking up a hand with nothing higher than a seven are 254,397 to 1. Yep, that stinker is 139 times less likely than a Yarborough.

From time to time players complain about computer dealt hands, often along the lines of "These hands are fixed in some way." The truth is that the hands at ACBL tournament hands are decently random and certainly not setup to make our life more difficult.

Here is what the hand looked like at Linda and Jim's table (Jim opened 2C and they played 2N and were down four):

Five EW pairs got plus scores when NS played 2♥s or 2♠s and went down one or two.

So the next time you pick up a bad hand just remember it is almost certainly better than the one Linda Stahl had at the 2016 Sarasota-Manatee Regional. And may none of us have this bad a hand this week!