The 48 teams that entered the Vanderbilt were seeded by masterpoints into three brackets. Thursday morning a storm knocked out the Atlantic City power station causing the first matches to be delayed until Thursday evening. Most teams played their first match and half of their second at that time. However, the Fishbein team played entire second match on Thursday night, finishing about 5 a.m. Friday.
At the time the Vanderbilt was played as a double elimination, so the 24 winning teams continued in the undefeated half and the 24 losing teams continued in the defeated half.
At the end of the two matches on Friday there were four undefeated teams. The round of 16 was postponed until Monday to allow time for the Open Pair Championship.
The Jacoby team was the first of the top-seeded teams to bite the dust. Team Jacoby (Oswald, Ira Rubin, Al Roth, Tobias Stone, Emanuel Hochfeld and Milton Ellenby) lost by 28 IMPs to the team of Dr. Kalman Apfel, Francis Begley, Murray Schnee, Louis Kelner and Ronald Rosenberg.
In the undefeated bracket, Team Fishbein defeated Team von Zedtwitz and the Goren team defeated the Kaplan team. All teams remained in the contest.
Fishbein defeated Goren by 8 IMPs and was the only team remaining in the undefeated bracket.
The Kaplan team (Edgar Kaplan, Alfred Sheinwold, Charles Solomon, Norman Kay, Ralph Hirshberg and Richard Kahn) faced the Cinderella team of six Philadelphia ladies (Edith Rosenbloom, Ruth Gilbert, Mrs. C. Vorhees, Mrs. H. Sabott, Mrs. Barney Budin and Mrs. Herman Simon) and just barely managed to scrape through. They won by a mere 5 IMPs.
By Tuesday afternoon only six teams remained: Team Fishbein (Harry Fishbein, Sam Fry, Lee Hazen, Leonard Harmon, Ivar Stakgold), Team Kaplan, Team Goren (Charles Goren, Helen Sobel, Howard Schenken, Peter Leventritt, Boris Koytchou and Harold Ogust), Team von Zedtwitz (Waldemar von Zedtwitz, William Seamon, Albert Weiss, Edith Kemp and Sam Stayman), Team Johnson (Sallie Johnson, Pedro Cabral, Roger Stern, and Lawrence Rosler) and Team Crawford (John Crawford, Sidney Silodor, B. Jay Becker, George Rapée, John Gerber and Paul Hodge).
Fishbein defeated Johnson, Kaplan defeated von Zedtwitz and Crawford defeated Goren.
Only three teams remained on Tuesday night. Fishbein drew a bye while Kaplan eliminated Crawford. Fishbein remained undefeated, winning by 15 IMPs over Kaplan.
Vanderbilt winners Lee Hazen, Harry Fishbein, Ivar Stakgold, Leonard Harmon, Sam Fry Jr