Mindboggling whist hand leaves heads spinning
A group of whist players was stunned when they were each dealt a COMPLETE SUIT in an opening hand – beating mind-boggling odds of a THOUSAND QUADRILLION to one.
Wenda Douthwaite, 77, and her three friends were left “gobsmacked” when they were each dealt the hand during a game last month. Mathematicians say the odds of each player being dealt a complete suit in the first hand of whist are a jaw-dropping 2,235,197,406,895,366, 368,301,559,999 to one.
Following suit
The staggering 28-digit figure is the equivalent odds of a person finding a specific drop of water in the Pacific Ocean. Wenda, from Kineton, Warks., who has attended whist drives for 50 years, said: “I was gobsmacked. We’ve never seen anything like it before. “Everything was done as usual. The cards were shuffled, cut and dealt as normal but that was the only thing that was normal. “And it was the first game of the night as well. As soon as I picked up my cards I saw I had a complete set of spades. “They were not in order but they were all there. It was amazing. Suddenly someone around the table said they’d got a complete suit too. “We compared cards and were totally shocked when one of us had all the hearts, another had the diamonds, another had the clubs and I had the spades.
Cards on the table
“I was shaking when we lay the cards down on the table. “I think the expression is gobsmacked. It’s just a pity the Guinness Book of Records wasn’t there to witness it.” The once-in-a-lifetime hand came as when Wenda and her friends attended their weekly whist drive in the village hall. Moments after the players turned over their 13 cards they discovered they all had complete suits.
Whist, which is played by four players in two teams, dates back to the 17th Century. Each player is dealt 13 cards and competes to win ‘tricks’. Players try to play cards which follow suit with the highest ranking card or ‘trump’ to win the hand. Norman Stone, 77, who was also playing in the hand, said: “It was absolutely amazing and will never happen again. “In 50 years of playing cards I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Wenda, a retired tea room manager with the National Trust, lives with her husband Brian, 77, a retired farmer.
Against the odds
Brian said: “Wenda has played whist since she was a little girl and this has never happened before. “I would doubt it’ll ever happen again.” Dr Alexander Mijatovic, a probability expert at Warwick University, said: “The chances of this happening are so humongous that it is almost impossible.
“The event can only be compared to natural occurrences. “It would be the same as a person having a tiny drop of water and then finding that same drop of water in the Pacific Ocean. “I would question whether the cards were shuffled the correct number of times but if they were, and the people involved are sure they were, then it is probably safe to say this is the first time this hand has ever been dealt in the history of the game.”
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