Name Helen Smith | ||
Died September 11, 1969, Detroit, Michigan, United States Similar People Charles Goren, Oswald Jacoby, Edgar Kaplan, Ely Culbertson, Ira Rubin | ||
Helen Sobel Smith (1910 – September 11, 1969) was an American bridge player. She is said to have been the "greatest woman bridge player of all time" and "may well have been the most brilliant card player of all time" She won 35 North American Bridge Championships, and was the first woman to play in the Bermuda Bowl. She was a long-time partner of Charles Goren.
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Sobel Smith was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1995, when the League established that honor by adding eight names to a list of nine whom The Bridge World had recognized in the 1960s. She was then the only woman among the 17. Her Hall of Fame citation paraphrases and quotes The Bridge World editor and publisher Edgar Kaplan: 'Helen's style was frisky and aggressive – so aggressive that "some of her male partners were intimidated. These guys felt they were playing in the Mixed Pairs and they were the girl." '
"In my lifetime", the citation also quotes Kaplan, "she is the only woman bridge player who was considered the best player in the world. She knows how to play a hand."
Sobel and Sally Young won the annual North American women pairs championship (now Whitehead Women's Pairs) in 1938 and again in 1939. That year Young became the first woman to achieve the rank of ACBL Life Master; Sobel became the second in 1941. (They were 17th and 25th overall, of whom the first twelve preceded ACBL.)
From 1943 to 1946, Sobel teamed with Young, Emily Folline, and Margaret Wagar to win the women teams four years in a row (Sternberg Women's Board-a-Match Teams, now a knockout format named for Wagar).
Biography
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Helen was a chorus girl in her youth. She appeared in several stage shows, the best known being Animal Crackers with the Marx Brothers. Another chorus girl taught her bridge: she took to the game like a duck to water. From that moment on, there was no doubt about her future.
Smith died in a Detroit hospital at the age of 59 after a long battle with cancer. The monthly ACBL 'Bulletin remembered her as a player "without a peer among women and very few peers among men. Helen played like a man, it was true. But she also played like a lady." '
Anecdote
Once Helen Sobel wearied of a female kibitzer who was all but sitting in partner Goren's lap. When the woman asked Sobel, in the middle of a hand, 'How does it feel to play with an expert?' the best female player in bridge pointed to Goren and said: 'I don't know. Ask him.'