Word: trumps
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Toward the end of the 19th century, a newcomer of obscure and disputed origin appeared in England from beyond the Channel. Called Russian whist or biritch (soon anglicized into bridge), the new game differed from standard whist in two ways: the dealer named trumps, or passed the privilege across the table to his partner, and the dealer's partner became dummy, laying down his hand for all to see. London whist players who tried the new game soon noted that the exposed hand made possible much greater subtlety and ingenuity of play. In 1903 or thereabouts, bridge-playing British...
...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...
...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, three for a void...
...syndicate's bridge columnist when Ely moved over to the Sun in 1944. A year later, sprightly Columnist Goren was appearing in more papers than Culbertson. Then, in 1951 Goren published his point-count bidding system in Contract Bridge Complete, and overwhelmed Culbertson with the decisiveness of a trump...
With North holding the trump suit and South the high-card strength, few partnerships would manage to arrive at a grand slam on this deal. The Irish partners playing the identical hands at the other table stopped at six hearts. With two biddable suits and rosy game prospects, Goren opened one club to give Sobel a chance to reply at the one level in case she held a weak hand. His second-round jump, displaying a good spade suit and extra high-card strength, committed the partnership to game, so Sobel could afford to say three hearts (rather than jump...