During a friendly game of bridge over the weekend, I was dealt the distinctly unpromising hand pictured above (and my apologies to experts who will have noticed that the cards are not arranged in the correct order). I had no one but myself to blame for the hand, though, since I was dealer.

This was the first time in many years of playing the game that I had received a hand with no court cards or aces — with ‘no points’, to use the bridge term. I told the beginners, with whom I was playing, that this was an example of a ‘Yarborough’. This is named after a 19th-century peer, the second Earl of Yarborough, who noticed how often he received such bad hands and took to betting (rather profitably) 1,000 to one that he would not be dealt one.

Strictly speaking, however, mine was not a Yarborough. Researching the matter on the internet, I discovered that to be so called a hand must not contain any card above a nine. The odds against receiving one of these is calculated at 1,827 to one. Mine had two tens. Some sources do say, though, that the term is loosely applied to any really weak hand.

In a way that generally happens with Internet searches, my inquiry produced as a by-product some fascinating information that I had not expected. The bridge writer Harold Schogger, for instance, supplied a story about a slam bid and made (at a London club in 1949) by a declarer with a Yarborough sitting opposite a partner whose only honours were the ace of diamonds and the king of clubs.

Anyone interested can find out how on haroldschogger.com