Word: goren
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...Point Count. By the early 1930s, having switched to contract along with everybody else, Goren ghosted for ex-Mentor Milton Work's syndicated column. Work got about $20,000 a year out of the column, paid Goren $35 a week-a disparity that Goren still resents. A talented and proud writer with a flair for gently whimsical humor, Goren vividly recalls that Boss Work would invariably "edit out the brightness...
...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...
...Goren system revolves around the fact that there are 40 high-card points in a deck. An opening suit bid requires 13 points, a bid is mandatory at 14 points, a partnership with 26 points should make game in a major suit (29 are needed in a minor suit), partners with 33 points should have a little slam, and 37 is the magic number for a grand slam...
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...
...Goren speaks of his point-count bidding system as a "back to nature movement," meaning that it makes scant use of artificial conventions, relies on "natural" bids that are logically related to the cards in the hand. In his own play, Goren seldom uses any artificial bids except the Blackwood and Gerber slam conventions...