Background
Lightner was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and moved to Chicago and later to New York City.
Lightner was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and moved to Chicago and later to New York City.
He graduated from Yale University and from Harvard Law School.
He developed the Lightner double, a bridge bidding convention. He was a lawyer and had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Apparently, he died from a heart attack days before his body was discovered in his New York apartment on November 22, 1981.
Lightner was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1999.
According to Victor Mollo: Number man stood so close to the emperor of bridge, Ely Culbertson, as Ted Lightner. The Lightner Double was not his most important contribution to the development of bridge bidding, but it bears his name because Culbertson was not keen on it and so did not claim it for himself.
Lightner was the first to put forward the idea that a change of suit by responder should be forcing, prior to that only a jump in a new suit having been played as forcing. Though opening two bids to show a strong hand were used at the Cavendish Club in New York, the method was not used by the top young players of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
To show an exceedingly strong hand a player would sometimes open 4NT or 5 of his suit.
Lightner suggested that an opening two bid should be used to announce such very powerful hands. Both the one-over-one forcing principle and strong opening two bids were enthusiastically adopted by Culbertson. Honors Wins Runners-up North American Bridge Championships von Zedtwitz Life Master Pairs (2) 1931, 1947 Vanderbilt (5) 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1945 Reisinger (3) 1932, 1934, 1947 Spingold (1) 1941 earlier Asbury Park Trophy (1) 1934.