First Match For The Schwab Trophy 1933 - Britain vs USA


This is one of the most famous match form 1930s, the first match between Britain and USA for the Schwab Trophy in London 1933. The intentation was that it would be a match for World Championship and Ely Culbertson entitled the match "The first World Championship", but it was not officially recognized. The reason was how it was implemented. It became at most an International match. Some have called it just a private match between Culbertson and Crockford's.

The first official recognized World Championship was arranged by IBL (predecessor to EBL and WBF) 1937 in Budapest, where Austria won (Paul Sterns "Wunderteam") using the Vienna system.

The video is a recreation of the match based on the official records from 1933. It shows bidding and play for all 300 boards in the open room and in the closed room the boards where a swing occured. Modern scoring is used. The most interesting boards are commented by Ely Culbertson and Henry Beasley, the captains of the teams.

The video is almost 7 hours long with about 450 plays. It is not a video to look at from to start to end. The most interesting deals, usually where a swing occured, can be found in the 1933 scoring document. The video is available in two versions, one with the whole match and one more handy version in 9 parts, which reflects the actual seatings.

In the biography about Culbertson, "The man who made Contract Bridge" by John Clay, there is a chapter  about the match. It can be read online at the Internet Archive.  

The match can also be viewed with a Bridge Movie program, BridgeVu or NetBridgeVu which can be dowloaded below. The programs are rather old (updates are frozen) and may not work on some Windows 10 systems. If one program does not work, the other may work. NetBridgeVu is installed in a new folder "Bridge Base Online". To run program select first the LIN file and right click and select NetBridgeVu. 

The most recent Bridge Movie program by BBO (only available online) is Handviewer, but it's  more complicated to use. It requires that the LIN files is wrapped in a XML file and stored and accessed on a server. More info in the Handviewer description, "Loading an external .lin file through a parameter".


   Article about the match                                                        Complete 1933 scoring

                                                

                                                           The whole Match 

                Part 1 - Board 1-30        

             Part 4 - Board 65-80

         Part 7 - Board 181-200

       Part 2 - Board 31-50

        Part 5 - Board 81-164

        Part 8 - Board 201-280

             Part 3 - Board 51-64

             Part 6 - Board 165-180

             Part 9 - Board 280-300 

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