I/N Corner

Goren’s Forgotten “Rules”

Rod.Bias@Cutlip.Org

Somewhere I read that the once-famous bridge expert Milton Work at the pinnacle of his career was making $7,000 a week. Even today that’s a huge paycheck. Back then it would have been astronomical. Average blue-collar workers (who could find jobs) were bringing in $20 to $30 a week (tax free!).

Milton Work was so busy with speaking tours, radio engagements, book promotions (he

authored dozens of books) and various other bridge enterprises that he hired an up-and-coming, hot shot bridge player to ghostwrite his daily syndicated bridge column. At the top of the column it said it was written by Milton Work, but every word below that claim dripped from the pen of a mostly unknown bridge writer that Work paid $200 a week. As with most business deals, both Work and his young protégé felt they each got a good deal. The ghostwriter was making as much as ten average men. Moreover, he could produce several articles a day and have lots of free time to (what else?) play in bridge tournaments. Time passed and the ghostwriter began asking himself why he didn’t strike out and write books under his own name. Thus began the freelance bridge-writing career of Charles H. Goren, the most famous bridge expert of the mid-twentieth century.

Goren neither Invented nor Advocated “Point Count” (at first)

Goren’s first books were not innovative. He tried to steer a course among the warring factions with Culbertson and the “Bridge World” on one side — Milton Work, Whitehead and the “Bridge Headquarters” on another side — and Jacoby, Schenken and the “Four Aces System” on still another side. Goren’s books said it makes little difference whether you use the Work (4321½) count or the Four Aces (321) count or the Culbertson count. His first book highlighted the Culbertson count. Later he shifted more to the Work count, including ½ for tens. By the early 1950s he dropped the ½ for tens because it was too complicated for average players. About 1950, out of nowhere, every non-expert in the American nation decided they wanted to play “the point count” like Goren does. Experts were nonplussed. The bandwagon was pulling away, and they ran to jump on. Everyone, except Goren, had to rewrite their books.

The Forgotten “Rules”

Goren’s books from the 1950s (and before) have several “rules” that mysteriously dropped out of “his” later books (after the Goren group started hiring ghostwriters to use the Goren name and write “Goren” books). Your scores might improve if you follow them. Here are four good ones:

1. Deduct one point if you have no aces.

2. Add one point if you have four aces.

3. Deduct one point if you have 4-3-3-3 shape.

4. Add one point if you have both tens in your two longest suits.

By the way, Goren was a kid when “the point count” was introduced in 1915. “The point count” was borrowed from another game called Auction Pitch. I love old books. 

Email me.