Card players dealt four perfect hands at whist

A group of whist players were each dealt a complete in an opening hand — beating odds of two thousand quadrillion to one. Wenda Douthwaite, 77, and her three friends were "gobsmacked" when they were dealt the hand during a game last week. Mathematician Dr Alexander Mijatovic, a probability expert at Warwick University, worked out the odds as being 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,559,999 to 1 — the equivalent to a person finding a specific drop of water in the Pacific Ocean.

And he said the perfect hand of cards might well be the first time it has ever happened in the history of whist. Wenda, a retired tea room manager from Kineton, Warks, who has attended whist drives for 50 years, said: "We've never seen anything like it before. Everything was done as usual. The pack of cards was an old one. The cards were shuffled, cut and dealt as normal.


Photo from SWNS.

"We play regularly and are always very careful to make sure the deck of cards is shuffled repeatedly. And it was the first game of the night as well. As soon as I picked up my cards I saw I had a complete set of spades. "They were not in order but they were all there. It was amazing. Suddenly someone around the table said they'd got a complete suit too. We compared cards and were totally shocked. I was shaking when we lay the cards down on the table."

The once-in-a-lifetime hand came last Thursday when Wenda and her friends attended their weekly whist drive in the village hall. Wenda was playing with Arthur Beasley, 74, who was dealt the suit of hearts. They were playing against Ron Coles, 73, who was the dealer and ended up with the complete set of clubs. His partner, Norman Stone, 74, was dealt the suit of diamonds.