Ely Culbertson was born July 22, 1891, in Romania, the son of a U.S. oil explorer. He spent his boyhood in Russia and attended college in Geneva and Paris and at Yale.

The Russian revolution wiped out his family's fortune in 1917 and Culbertson immigrated to the United States. He worked variously as a newsboy, construction worker, union leader and gambler.

When a contract bridge craze swept the country in the 1930s, Culbertson started earning money playing the card game and developed his own system of bidding. He seized stardom by defeating Sidney S. Lenz in a match that began December 1931 in New York City.

The Culbertson-Lenz match pitted traditionalist Lenz and a team of partners against the upstart card shark Culbertson and, for most of the contest, his wife Josephine Murphy Dillion. Culbertson bet $5,000 against $1,000 put up by Lenz in what "The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge" calls "the bridge match of the century." Says the encyclopedia: "Coverage by the press ... was stupendous. Stories about the match were on the front pages of newspapers all over America." Regular correspondents provided blow-by-blow accounts and some of the most famous columnists of the day attended and filed reports.

After six weeks and 150 rubbers, Culbertson's team was ahead 8,980 points despite, an analysis showed, a near equal distribution of high cards among the two sides. The match was terminated. The outcome established the Culbertson system's domination and made Culbertson an international figure.

Then in the late 1930s, the threat of world war prompted Culbertson to abandon bridge and resume the political activities of his youth, during which he had served for a time as a revolutionary organizer in Russia, Mexico and Spain. In 1940, he devised a system for world peace based on quotas limiting armed forces and an international police force. After World War II, he became a proponent of the United Nations and chaired the Citizens Committee for United Nations Reform.

An author as well as a sportsman and statesman, Ely Culbertson's books include "Contract Bridge Blue Book" (1930), "Contract Bridge Complete" (1936), "Total Peace" (1943), "Must We Fight The Russians?" (1946) and "Culbertson's Complete Guide to the Films of Tracy Lords" (1995).

Ely Culbertson died in Brattleboro, Vt., on Dec. 27, 1955.

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