Ely Culbertson - Challenge Matches - Anglo-American Matches

Anglo-American Matches

Lt. Col. Walter Buller promoted a bidding system that he called "British Bridge", which used direct methods and avoided approach forcing bids as had been incorporated in the Culbertson System. His challenge was accepted by Culbertson, and a teams of four match took place in London in 1930. Culbertson's team won by 4,845 total points over 200 deals. Culbertson partnered his wife, Josephine, and his other pair comprised Lightner and von Zedtwitz. Later in the match Culbertson played with Lightner, and his wife played with von Zedwitz: this was the more successful line-up. The other three members of Buller's team were Alice Evers, Cedric Kehoe and Nelson Wood-Hill.

Immediately after the Buller match, the Culbertson team played another match, against Crockford's Club. The Crockford's team was 'Pops' Beasley (Captain), Sir Guy Domville, George Morris and Captain Hogg; the match over 200 boards was won by Culbertson by 4,905 points (total points scoring).

The matches in 1933 and 1934 both took place for the Schwab Cup, a trophy presented for Anglo-American matches by Charles Schwab, an American industrialist and patron of bridge, who was president of the Whist Club of New York. In 1933, Michael Gottlieb replaced von Zedtwitz in the Culbertson team. The British team consisted of Lt. Col. 'Pops' Beasley and Sir Guy Domville, Percy Tabbush and George Morris, Graham Mathieson and Lady Doris Rhodes (pairs were sometimes aligned differently). Culbertson's team won by 10,900 total points over 300 hands. A decisive, but not overwhelming, victory.

The following year, again in London, the Schwab trophy pitted Culbertson's team against, for the first time, a team with "two very experienced partnerships" (Reese) captained by Col. George Walshe. The American team consisted of the Culbertsons, Teddy Lightner and Albert Morehead. The British team was Richard Lederer and Willie Rose; Harry Ingram and Stanley Hughes, with captain Walshe and A. Frost as reserves. Culbertson's team won by 3,650 points over 300 deals. At one time the British team had built up a lead of over 5,000 points, and the Americans led by only 970 points with one session, of 30 deals, remaining. The Lederer–Rose pair tired but refused to take a rest; the last set was a disaster. Ingram referred to the element of fatigue when he remarked that at least three of the English players had done a day's work before the evening sessions, while the Americans did not get up till lunchtime. All the same, Walshe's team had shown that the great Culbertson team was vulnerable. They were eventually beaten by Dr Paul Stern's Austrian team, the best European team of the 1930s.

Anglo-American matches after World War II, of which there were a number, did not involve Culbertson.