Wendy Davis – a bridge player with more than 50 years of experience – dropped dead from excitement after playing an extremely rare winning hand of 29 en route to to winning a county tournament. After playing the hand she slumped forward in her chair at the John Betjeman Center in Wadebridge and could not be resuscitated by anyone else in the centre. She was 80 years old and was the highest ranking bridge player in Cornwall with Premier Life Status, although I don’t know exactly what that means.

The hand she played was a high-scoring 6 No Trumps and an overtrick (I don’t know what that means either) which apparently is one of the rarest hands you encounter in bridge. The highest score you can get is 37 and the combination of cards that Wendy was holding – although they only scored her 39 points – was so rare that it apparently only comes up once in every 115,000 hands. Apparently if you play one game of bridge a week then it will only occur once every 115 years. Those are some odds so I bet Wendy was pretty stoked to finally see it. So stoked in fact that there wasn’t any point in living anymore.

Although sad, her friends and family seem satisfied that she went out on a high doing what she loved. Her friend Barrie Benfield said that ‘it was the perfect bridge player’s death’ whilst her son Charlie Brown (yes really) said ‘I can imagine the smile on her face when she looked at her cards and she knew she had a winning hand. She died doing what she loved to do.’

‘Her death was obviously a great shock and was very sudden, but looking back we are very happy she went this way. When I go myself I would love to think I’ll go out like this, doing something I love.’

☛ More Death: Dumb And Disturbing Deaths