Charles Henry Goren (March 4, 1901 – April 3, 1991) was an American

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

player and writer who significantly developed and popularized the game. He was the leading American bridge personality in the 1950s and 1960s – or 1940s and 1950s, as "Mr. Bridge" – as

Ely Culbertson Elie Almon Culbertson (July 22, 1891 – December 27, 1955), known as Ely Culbertson, was an American contract bridge entrepreneur and personality dominant during the 1930s. He played a major role in the popularization of the new game and was wide ...

had been in the 1930s. Culbertson, Goren, and Harold Vanderbilt were the three people named when ''

The Bridge World ''The Bridge World'' (TBW), the oldest continuously published magazine about contract bridge, was founded in 1929 by Ely Culbertson. It has since been regarded as the game's principal journal, publicizing technical advances in bidding and the pla ...

'' inaugurated a bridge "hall of fame" in 1964 and they were made founding members of the

ACBL Hall of Fame This list is a compilation of contract bridge players, writers, administrators and personalities who have been recognized for their skills, achievements or contributions to the game as identified by various specific sources. People recognized by ...

in 1995. According to ''New York Times'' bridge columnist

Alan Truscott Alan Fraser Truscott (16 April 1925 – 4 September 2005) was a British-American bridge player, writer, and editor. He wrote the daily bridge column for ''The New York Times'' for 41 years, from 1964 to 2005, and served as Executive Editor for th ...

, more than 10 million copies of Goren's books were sold. Among them, ''Point-Count Bidding'' (1949) "pushed the great mass of bridge players into abandoning Ely Culbertson's clumsy and inaccurate honor-trick method of valuation." Goren's widely syndicated newspaper column "Goren on Bridge" first appeared in the Chicago Tribune August 30 1944, p.15.

Early years

Goren was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, Pennsylvania, to

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Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

immigrants. He earned a law degree at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

in 1923. While he was attending McGill, a girlfriend (or "a young hostess") laughed at his ineptness at the game of bridge, motivating him to immerse himself in a study of existing bridge materials. (The young hostess laughed in 1922. The game was

auction bridge The card game auction bridge was the third step in the evolution of the general game of bridge. It was developed from bridge whist in 1904, possibly by 1900. Auction bridge was the precursor to contract bridge. Its predecessors were whist and brid ...

, "which became

contract bridge Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions o ...

later in the decade".) When he graduated, he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar and he practiced law for 13 years in Philadelphia. The growing fame of

, however, prompted Goren to abandon his original career choice to pursue bridge competitions, where he attracted the attention of

Milton Work Milton Cooper Work (September 15, 1864 – June 27, 1934) was an American authority on whist, bridge whist, auction and contract bridge. At least during the 19th century he was a cricket player, writer, and official. Work, Sidney Lenz, and Oswald ...

. Work hired Goren to help with his bridge articles and columns, and eventually Goren began

ghostwriting A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often h ...

Work's material. Work was one of numerous strong bridge players based in Philadelphia around the 1920s. He became an extraordinarily successful lecturer and writer on the game and perhaps the first who came to be called its "Grand Old Man". From 1928, he had popularized the 4–3–2–1 point count system for evaluating balanced hands (now sometimes called the Work count, Work point count, or Work points). His chief assistant

Olive Peterson Olive Stone Avery Peterson (January 20, 1898 – February 10, 1965)''Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014''. Social Security Administration. was an American bridge player and teacher from St. Davids, Pennsylvania, on the Philadelphia Main Line. ...

and young Goren established a partnership as players. Work was the greatest authority on auction bridge, which was generally replaced by contract bridge during the late 1920s. Goren "became Mr. Work's technical assistant at the end of the decade". As a player Goren's "breakthrough" was the 1937 Board-a-Match Teams championship (now

Reisinger The Reisinger national bridge championship is held at the fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). The Reisinger is a board-a-match event. History The event is contested for the Reisinger Trophy ( ...

) won with three other Philadelphia players: John Crawford, Charles Solomon, and

Sally Young Sally may refer to: People *Sally (name), a list of notable people with the name Military *Sally (military), an attack by the defenders of a town or fortress under siege against a besieging force; see sally port *Sally, the Allied reporting nam ...

. His breakthrough as a writer may have been when Culbertson moved a newspaper bridge column from one syndicate to another. The ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'' and the '' Daily News'' of New York picked up Goren. Goren dominated the competitive bridge circuit until about 1962 after which he focused on writing and teaching bridge

Bridge contributions

After Milton Work died in 1934, Goren began his own bridge writing career and published the first of his many books on playing bridge, ''Winning Bridge Made Easy'', in 1936. Drawing on his experience with Work's system, Goren quickly became popular as an instructor and lecturer. His subsequent lifetime of contributions to the game have made him one of the most important figures in the history of bridge. Goren became world champion at the

Bermuda Bowl The Bermuda Bowl is a biennial contract bridge world championship for national . It is contested every odd-numbered year under the auspices of the World Bridge Federation (WBF), alongside the Venice Cup (women), the d'Orsi Senior Bowl and the Wuh ...

in 1950. Goren's books have sold millions of copies (especially ''Winning Bridge Made Easy'' and ''Contract Bridge Complete''); by 1958 his daily bridge column was appearing in 194 American newspapers. He also had a monthly column in ''

McCall's ''McCall's'' was a monthly American women's magazine, published by the McCall Corporation, that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of 8.4 million in the early 1960s. It was established as a small-f ...

'' and a weekly column in ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...

''. His television program, ''Championship Bridge with Charles Goren'', was broadcast from 1959 to 1964 on the ABC network. It featured numerous appearances by top players and segments with celebrity guests such as

Chico Marx Leonard Joseph "Chico" Marx (; March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was an American comedian, actor and pianist. He was the oldest brother in the Marx Brothers comedy troupe, alongside his brothers Adolph ("Harpo"), Julius ("Groucho"), Milton ...

Alfred Drake Alfred Drake (October 7, 1914 – July 25, 1992) was an American actor and singer. Biography Born as Alfred Capurro in New York City, the son of parents emigrated from Recco, Genoa, Drake began his Broadway career while still a student at Broo ...

, and

Forest Evashevski Forest "Evy" Evashevski (February 19, 1918 – October 30, 2009) was an American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He played college football at the University of Michigan from 1938 to 1940 and with the Iowa Pre-Flight ...

, among others. Goren's longest partnership was with

Helen Sobel Helen Elizabeth Sobel Smith (''née'' Martin; May 22, 1909 – September 11, 1969) was an American bridge player. She is said to have been the "greatest woman bridge player of all time" and "may well have been the most brilliant card player of ...

, but he also famously partnered actor

Omar Sharif Omar Sharif ( ar, عمر الشريف ; born Michel Yusef Dimitri Chalhoub , 10 April 193210 July 2015) was an Egyptian actor, generally regarded as one of his country's greatest male film stars. He began his career in his native country in the ...

. Sharif also wrote introductions to or co-authored several of Goren's bridge books, and was also co-author of Goren's newspaper column, eventually taking it over in collaboration with Tannah Hirsch.

Point count system

As he continued writing, Goren began to develop his point count system, based on the

point count, as an improvement over the existing system of counting "honor tricks". Goren, with assistance, formulated a method of combining the Work count, which was based entirely on high cards, and various distributional features. This may well have improved the bidding of intermediate players and beginners almost immediately.

Four-card suits

Goren also worked to continue the practice of opening four-card suits, with an occasional three-card club suit when the only four-card suit was a weak . In this, he was following the practice established by

in the early 1930s. Later on, he continued this practice, resisting the well-known ''five-card majors'' approach that has become a major feature of modern

Standard American Standard American is a bidding system for the game of bridge widely used in North America and elsewhere. Owing to the popularization of the game by Charles Goren in the 1940s and 1950s, its early versions were sometimes referred to simply as 'Go ...

bidding. Opening a four-card suit can improve the chances of the partnership identifying a four-four trump fit, and the four-card approach is still used by experts today, notably by most

Acol Acol is the bridge bidding system that, according to ''The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge'', is "standard in British tournament play and widely used in other parts of the world". It is a natural system using four-card majors and, most commonly, ...

players. It is claimed that the drawback of the four-card approach is that the

Law of Total Tricks In contract bridge, the Law of total tricks (abbreviated here as LoTT) is a guideline used to help determine how high to bid in a competitive auction. It is not really a law (because counterexamples are easy to find) but a method of hand evalua ...

is more difficult to apply in cases where it is used. However, the five-card majors approach became popular before the Law of Total Tricks was propounded.

Other contributions

In addition to his pioneering work in bringing simple and effective bridge to everyday players, Goren also worked to popularize the

Precision Precision, precise or precisely may refer to: Science, and technology, and mathematics Mathematics and computing (general) * Accuracy and precision, measurement deviation from true value and its scatter * Significant figures, the number of digit ...

bidding method, which is one of many so-called big club or

strong club system The Strong Club System is a set of bidding conventions and agreements used in the game of contract bridge and is based upon an opening bid of 1 as being an artificial forcing bid promising a strong hand. The strong 1 opening is assigned a minimum ...

s (which use an opening bid of one club to indicate a strong hand).

Tribune Content Agency Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media Se ...

distributes the daily column Goren Bridge, written by Bob Jones, using the Goren method.

Legacy

Goren died on April 3, 1991, in

Encino, California Encino (Spanish language, Spanish for "oak") is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. History In 1769, the Spanish Portolá expedition, first Europeans to see inland areas of California, traveled north t ...

, at the age of 90. He had lived with his nephew Marvin Goren for 19 years. While few players "play Goren" exactly today, the point-count approach he popularized remains the foundation for most bidding systems. During the month of Goren's death, Truscott followed his obituary with a bridge column entitled, "Goren leaves behind many fans and a column with an international flavor". His business interests had been "managed by others" since his retirement "a quarter of a century ago", according to Truscott. "The Goren syndicated column now has an international flavor: It carries the bylines of the movie star

, an Egyptian who lives in Paris, and an entrepreneur, Tannah Hirsch, a South African who came to the United States via Israel." Goren appeared on the

Groucho Marx Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (; October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, stage, film, radio, singer, television star and vaudeville performer. He is generally considered to have been a master of quick wit an ...

radio and television game show

You Bet Your Life ''You Bet Your Life'' is an American comedy quiz series that has aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show deb ...

in March 1958.

Bridge accomplishments

Honors

* ACBL Hall of Fame, 1964"Induction by Year"
. ''Hall of Fame''. ACBL. Retrieved 2014-12-08. * ACBL Honorary Member of the Year, 1959

Awards

* McKenney Trophy 1937, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 * Precision Award (Best Article or Series on a System or Convention) 1974

Wins

(1) 1950 *

North American Bridge Championships North American Bridge Championships (NABC) are three annual bridge tournaments sponsored by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). The "Spring", "Summer", and "Fall" NABCs are usually scheduled in March, July, and November for about eleven da ...

(32) ** Vanderbilt (2) 1944, 1945 ** Asbury Park Trophy (now Spingold) (1) 1937 **

Spingold The Spingold national bridge championship is held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). The Spingold is a knock-out team event that attracts the top contract bridge players in the world. T ...

(5) 1943, 1947, 1951, 1956, 1960 **

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

(now Reisinger) (8) 1937, 1938, 1939, 1942, 1943, 1950, 1957, 1963 ** Men's Board-a-Match Teams (1) 1952 ** Master Mixed Teams (6) 1938, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1948, 1954 ** Life Master Pairs (2) 1942, 1958 **

Fall National Open Pairs The National Open Pairs was the first national bridge championship for open pairs and was held at the fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC) as a four-session matchpoint (MP) pairs event. History In ...

(1) 1940 ** Men's Pairs (3) 1938, 1943, 1949 **

Rockwell Mixed Pairs The Rockwell Mixed Pairs is a national bridge championship held regularly at the Spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). The Rockwell Trophy, donated by Helen Rockwell in 1946, is presented to the w ...

(1) 1947 **

Hilliard Mixed Pairs The Hilliard Mixed Pairs national bridge championship was last held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). History This was the original national mixed pairs event. It was contested at the ...

(1) 1943 **

Master Individual The Master Individual national bridge championship was held at the fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC); it was held from 1931 until 1960 after which it was discontinued. Trophy The event was co ...

(1) 1945

Runners-up

(2) 1956, 1957 *

(21) ** Vanderbilt (8) 1934, 1936, 1949, 1950, 1953, 1955, 1959, 1962 **

(2) 1939, 1950 **

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

(now Reisinger) (2) 1944, 1951 ** Men's Board-a-Match Teams (2) 1946, 1955 ** Master Mixed Teams (4) 1946, 1949, 1950, 1951 ** Life Master Pairs (1) 1953 ** Men's Pairs (1) 1935 **

(1) 1934

Publications

* ''Winning Bridge Made Easy: a simplified self-teaching method of contract bidding combining all the principles of the new Culbertson system with the principal features of the four aces system'' (Harrisburg, PA: The Telegraph Press, 1936), 92 pp., * ''Better Bridge for Better Players: the play of the cards'', introduction by Ely Culbertson, foreword by George S. Kaufman (

Doubleday, Doran Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...

, 1942), 538 pp. ; also known as ''The Standard Book of Play: better bridge for better players'', : The earliest British edition in

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

records is ''Better Bridge for Better Players: the standard book of play'', intro. Culbertson, fwd. Kauffman (London: Walter Edwards, 1947), * ''The Standard Book of Bidding'' (Doubleday, 1944), 299 pp. ; (Doubleday, 1947), 310 pp. * ''Contract Bridge in a Nutshell'' (Doubleday, 1946), 128 pp. ; at least seven editions to 1986 under the titles ''Contract Bridge in a Nutshell'' BN ''New CBN'', ''Goren's New CBN'', or ''Charles Goren's New CBN'' * ''Contract Bridge Made Easy, a self-teacher'' (Doubleday, 1948), 95 pp. – "Replaces the author's Winning bridge made easy, first pub. in 1936 and now out of print." * First London edition published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1951. Title has been revised and reprinted numerous times to 1984. * . First London edition published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1959. Title has been reprinted numerous times to 1972. * with

Jack Olsen Jack Olsen (June 7, 1925 – July 16, 2002) was an American journalist and author known for his crime reporting. Olsen was senior editor-in-chief for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' in 1954. He was Midwest bureau chief for ''Time'' and a senior ...

: . Paperback editions published by Cornerstone Library, NY in 1967 and 1970, pp. 190.Bourke and Sugden (2010), p. 487. *100 Challenging Bridge Hands *An Entirely New Bridge Summary *The A.B.C.'s of Contract Bridge *Championship Bridge with Charles Goren *Charles H. Goren's Bridge Quiz Book *Contract Bridge Complete *Easy Steps: Eight Steps to Winning Bridge *The Elements of Bridge *The Fundamental of contract Bridge *Goren on Play and Defense: All of Play: The Technique, the Logic, and the Challenge of Master Bridge *Goren Presents the Italian Bridge System *Goren Settles the Bridge Arguments *Goren's Bridge Complete *Goren's Bridge Quizzes *Goren's Hoyle Encyclopedia of Bridge *Goren's New Contract Bridge Complete *Goren's Point Count Bidding Made Easy *Goren's Winning Partnership Bridge *Introduction to Bridge *Introduction to Competitive Bidding * ''Modern Backgammon Complete'' *Official Charles Goren Quick Reference to Winning Bridge *Play and Defense *Play As You Learn Bridge *Play Bridge With Goren *Play Winning Bridge With Any Partner: Even a Stranger *Precision Bridge for Everyone *The Precision System of Bidding *Precision System of Contract Bridge Bidding: Charles H. Goren Presents *Sports Illustrated Book of Bridge

Notes

References

Citations * *

External links

* * *
King of the Aces
''Time'' magazine (1958)

Turning Tricks: The Rise and Fall of Contract Bridge
by David Owen in ''The New Yorker''
Charles Goren
biography on bridgebum.com
Charles Goren on the television program "What's My Line?"
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Goren, Charles Henry 1901 births 1991 deaths American contract bridge players Bermuda Bowl players American instructional writers Contract bridge writers American people of Russian-Jewish descent Writers from Philadelphia 20th-century American non-fiction writers McGill University Faculty of Law alumni Central High School (Philadelphia) alumni