Word: culbertson
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...Rough Edges. Just as bridgedom's envious experts now call Goren's hard-earned credentials into question, so a younger, hungrier Charles Goren sniped at Ely Culbertson. Ely, cried Goren in the early days, was all through-and had never been really great anyhow. The inner drive that carried Charlie Goren past Culbertson was sharpened by the rough edges of poverty in his Philadelphia childhood. The son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants, he grew up in a brawling district of "Jews, Irish and Irish." Charlie made up for small size with pugnacity, endurance, and indifference to pain. Recalls...
Billed as the "Bridge Battle of the Century," the four-week Lenz-Culbertson match was the most publicized card joust in history. The wire services had top reporters covering the match from start to finish, papers put out extras on results, and readers who could not tell a doubleton from a double followed the daily point score. Lenz and Jacoby got off to an early lead, but at the end of the 150th rubber the Culbertson partnership was ahead by 8,980 points, and Lenz paid up. That ended any small remaining doubt about whether Culbertson...
...already known as a highly successful tournament player, Goren published his first book, Winning Bridge Made Easy. In it he prophetically deviated from the Culbertson system. For suit bids, Goren stuck pretty much to Culbertson's elaborate "honor trick" count, but for no-trump bidding he adopted Milton Work's method of evaluating a hand with a point count: four points for an ace, three for a king, two for a queen, one for a jack. Entranced by the point count's simplicity, Goren devoted numberless hours to expanding the idea into a general bidding method...
Beyond its tremendous advantage of simplicity, the Goren method was more reliable than Culbertson's. Ely's honor-trick count tended to undervalue kings, queens and jacks, overvalue the ace and the A-K combination. By bringing high-card valuation more into line with play-of-the-cards realities, Goren saved bridge players countless set contracts, especially at no trump. Another virtue of Goren's method was that it supplied a practical way of taking distribution into account: on suit bids (but not on no-trump) it adds one point for a doubleton, two for a singleton...
Flicker of Triumph. The day Winning Bridge Made Easy was published, Charles Goren gave up the practice of law. Soon after that, Ely Culbertson issued a public challenge to all comers, apparently never dreaming that Goren would risk his growing reputation against the master. But Charlie grabbed at the opportunity. Goren still treasures Culbertson's letter explaining that a sudden business trip to Europe made it necessary to call off the match. "Ely was using good judgment," says Goren, a faint but unmistakable flicker of triumph on his face...