2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,559,991, to 1

It was Thursday evening in Kankakee, Ill., and the ladies' bridge club was in session, just as it has been every second Thursday evening for the past 32 years. At one of the two tables, Mrs. Ethel Hay (far right) dealt the cards and picked up her hand. She saw spades. The closer she looked, the more spades she saw, nothing but. Meanwhile, the other ladies at the table were looking at their cards. Mrs. Betty Lehman (second right) picked hers up one at a time. After seven cards she had seven clubs. "I'll be able to make a marvelous pre-emptive bid with this hand," she thought. Mrs. Irene Sellers (far left) looked quickly at her hand, saw nothing but red cards and imagined she had a two-suiter. "I saw diamonds first and started looking for hearts," she said. There were none. Mrs. Arlene Wagner (second left) had them all. The ladies of Kankakee had a wondrous bridge hand, one suit to each player. The odds against this, as computed by Remington Rand, make such a holding "impossible," says the American Contract Bridge League. To find out how the ladies bid their impossible hand and what to do should you pick up 13 cards in one suit, turn to page 74.

FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTO

LEE BALTERMAN