Helen Sobel Smith

The winning Austria open team at the 1937 world championships: Karl Schneider, Hans Jellinek, Edouard Frischauer, Paul Stern (captain), Josephine Culbertson (US), Walter Herbert, Helen Sobel (US), and Karl von Blöhdorn. Missing: Udo von Meissl.

Helen Elizabeth Sobel Smith (née Martin; May 22, 1909 – 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.

Biography

Sobel Smith was born Helen Martin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Cornelius and Ethel Martin (née Murphy).

Helen was a chorus girl in her youth. At age 16, she was already performing with the Marx Brothers in shows including The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers. She only knew only how to play pinochle and Casino until another chorus girl taught her bridge:

She started earning a reputation in the mid-1930s, winning her first national championship in 1934. After a brief marriage to a Jack White that ended in 1930, she married bridge player Alexander M. Sobel (1901–1972), a former vaudeville performer who found better work in the Depression as a tournament director. Though she and Sobel eventually divorced in 1945, she achieved most of her success under the name Helen Sobel.

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).

She married Stanley Smith in 1966, and retired for two years. She died in a Detroit hospital at the age of 60 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."

Bridge accomplishments

Honors ACBL Hall of Fame, 1995

Awards McKenney Trophy 1941, 1942, 1944 Fishbein Trophy 1958

Wins North American Bridge Championships (35) Vanderbilt (2) 1944, 1945 Spingold (5) 1944, 1947, 1951, 1956, 1960 Chicago (now Reisinger) (4) 1941, 1943, 1950, 1957 Master Mixed Teams (6) 1941, 1943, 1944, 1948, 1954, 1968 Women's Board-a-Match Teams (7) 1935, 1936, 1939, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946 Life Master Pairs (2) 1942, 1958 Fall National Open Pairs (3) 1940, 1947, 1948 Rockwell Mixed Pairs (2) 1955, 1956 Hilliard Mixed Pairs (1) 1944 Women's Pairs (3) 1934, 1938, 1939

Runners-up IBL World Championship (1) 1937 Bermuda Bowl (1) 1957 North American Bridge Championships (31) Vanderbilt (7) 1942, 1949, 1950, 1953, 1955, 1959, 1962 Spingold (2) 1943, 1950 Chicago (now Reisinger) (2) 1944, 1951 Master Mixed Teams (4) 1946, 1949, 1950, 1951 Women's Board-a-Match Teams (10) 1937, 1941, 1942, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958 Life Master Pairs (1) 1953 Fall National Open Pairs (1) 1938 Hilliard Mixed Pairs (2) 1933, 1940 Women's Pairs (2) 1947, 1965

Publications

All the Tricks New York: Greenberg, 1949, 245 pp. – "With post-mortems by Charles H. Goren and Howard Dietz." British edition, Winning Bridge (London: P. Davies, 1950), All the Tricks Revised edition, All the Tricks (New York: Cornerstone Library, 1961), 186 pp. – " 'I find I had to do very little changing or revising or updating.'—Foreword."