Talk:Charles Goren
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Charles Goren did not "contribute" the practice of opening four-card suits to bidding theory. Nor was the high-card point-count his invention. However, his contributions were huge and I don't want to seem to belittle them, so I will explain:
-- The practice of opening four-card suits was commonplace when Goren devised the methods that would supercede Culbertson. Culbertson's methods, easily the most popular, were not Five-Card Majors methods. The methods that would be called Five-Card Majors (should be called "don't open four-card Majors") was unknown or not widely known. After Five-Card Majors began to make inroads, Goren was the most influential exponent of the older methods. He, or the people who wrote under his name, discontinued this rear-guard action toward the end of his career and they advocated a Five-Card Major system.
-- Milton Work devised the point-count for high cards where an Ace is valued as four, King as three, Queen as two and Jack as one. Work himself said that Aces were somewhat undervalued and Queens and Jacks somewhat overvalued in this point-count but he felt that good players could make adjustments for that. Goren adopted the point-count for high cards and then, along with an associate named, I believe, Anderson, developed a simple set of methods to count points for _distribution_ which changed the bidding habits of a generation. Great bidders did not improve when point count bidding came along, or not much, but good bidders became much more accurate and ordinary players were now reaching what we call normal contracts with regularity, something not seen in the early years of the game.
-- Will in New Haven
