Jeff Rubens (born 1941) is 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, editor, and writer of books including ''Secrets of Winning Bridge'' and ''Expert Bridge Simplified''. He is best known for long association with ''

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 ...

'' monthly magazine, as co-editor under

Edgar Kaplan Edgar Kaplan (April 18, 1925 – September 7, 1997) was an American bridge player and one of the principal contributors to the game. His career spanned six decades and covered every aspect of bridge. He was a teacher, author, editor, administrator, ...

from 1967 and as editor and publisher since Kaplan's death in 1997. Rubens is from

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Life

Rubens attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where he was captain of the math team in 1957, the year he graduated. He has an undergraduate degree from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and a graduate degree from

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , ...

. He won seven North American championship events in the 1960s-70s, represented North America in the 1973 world championship, and "gave up competitive bridge for family reasons" soon after. Rubens is a retired professor of mathematics and computer science at

Pace University Pace University is a private university with its main campus in New York City and secondary campuses in Westchester County, New York. It was established in 1906 by the brothers Homer St. Clair Pace and Charles A. Pace as a business school. Pace ...

in New York.

Competition

Rubens became an ACBL Life Master at 20 and won two North American championship events (then called "national championships") at age 23 in 1965, the Men's Pairs and Men's Teams. Seven years later he played with B. Jay Becker on teams that won the 1972

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 ...

national championship and the subsequent trial to represent North America in the world championship. Becker was 69, then the oldest participant in a Bermuda Bowl tournament, and famously conservative. According to

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

's report,

Becker is an ultraconservative who has often refused to play even so widely accepted a convention as Stayman. Rubens, a math teacher, employs advanced ideas on everything from opening bids to opening leads. Expert selectors would have been hard-pressed to put together a less likely partnership. Yet from their base of operations in the closed room this pair kept sending through perfect results on hand after hand, a performance that even the vaunted Blue Team would have found difficult to top. Certainly their opponents in the Trials could not begin to match it.

At Guarujá, Brazil, they finished fourth of five teams in the 1973 Bermuda Bowl.

Editor

Rubens and Paul Heitner established the short-lived ''Bridge Journal'' in the mid-1960s. It is best known for Journalist leads. ''The Bridge World'' monthly was established by Ely and Josephine Culbertson in 1929.

acquired it from McCall Corporation in 1966 and served as publisher and editor from the January 1967 issue until his death in September 1997. Some time in 1967 he brought Rubens on board as co-editor. They made the editorial column a monthly and prominent feature.

Bridge accomplishments

Honors

* ACBL Hall of Fame, Blackwood Award 2004"Induction by Year"
''Hall of Fame''. ACBL. Retrieved 2014-12-16.
Foundation for the Preservation and Advancement of Bridge (fpabridge.org). Retrieved 2014-12-17.

Awards

* Precision Award (Best Article or Series on a System or Convention) 1977, 1979, 1982

Wins

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 ...

(3) **

(1) 1972 ** Men's Board-a-Match Teams (1) 1965 ** Men's Pairs (1) 1965 * United States Bridge Championships (1) ** Open Team Trials (1) 1972

Publications

* ''Win at Poker'' ( Funk & Wagnalls, 1968); reprint

Dover Publications Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books ...

, 1984, * ''Modern Bridge Bidding Complete: introducing the Roth point count'' (Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), Al Roth and Rubens * ''The Secrets of Winning Bridge'' ( Grosset & Dunlap, 1969) * ''Bridge for Beginners'' (Funk & Wagnalls, 1970), Al Roth and Rubens * ''Official rules of the Tarotrump card game'' (U.S. Games Systems, 1972), Stuart R. Kaplan and Rubens – ules?"by Stuart R. Kaplan; suggestions for strategy by Jeff Rubens" * ''Test Your Play as Declarer'' (NY: Hart Pub, 1977),

Paul Lukacs Paul Lukacs (born Lukács Pàl; he, פאול לוקאץ'; 23 April 1918 – 1982) ''Palestine, Illegal Immigration from German-Occupied Europe, 1938-1945 (USHMM)'' was a Hungarian-Israeli mathematician, analyst and composer of problems in t ...

and Rubens * The Bridge World ''magazine: Swiss match challenge'' (Oakland: Lawrence & Leong Pub, 1992) * "Edgar Kaplan Remembered", ''The Bridge World'' onthly December 1997 to April 1998 * The Bridge Worlds Test your play'' (

Master Point Press Master Point Press is a Canadian book publishing company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It grew out of Canadian Master Point magazine (1992–1997), which was published by Ray and Linda Lee. The company began publishing books in 1994. While ...

, 2001)

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rubens, Jeff 1941 births American contract bridge players American magazine publishers (people) Contract bridge writers Brandeis University alumni Cornell University alumni Stuyvesant High School alumni People from Brooklyn Living people Date of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people)