Robert Frederick Foster

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This article is about the card game disseminator. For the Irish historian, see R. F. Foster (historian).
Cover
Title Page (with original owner's dated signature)
Foster's Complete Hoyle, Published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1897

Robert Frederick Foster (May 31, 1853 – 1945) of New York City, was a memory training promoter and a prolific author of over 50 books[1] on the rules of play of card, dice and board games.

Biography

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland May 31, 1853, the son of Alexander Frederick and Mary E. Macbrair.,[2] he immigrated to the United States at an early age and engaged in surveying and gold prospecting[1] and then manufacturing before turning to the memory training and writing businesses in 1893.[3]

Married to Mary E. Johnson in 1891, he was the card editor for the New York Sun from 1895[2] to 1919[4] and for the New York Tribune from 1919[2] and a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine.[1] Foster’s great achievement[5] was his Foster’s Complete Hoyle, first published in 1897; revised and republished frequently during his lifetime and then by others after his death. Having written numerous whist and bridge books by 1935, he was considered "the dean of living bridge authorities" at the time.[4]

A member of several card, athletic and golf clubs including: Knickerbockers Whist and the Cavendish Club, he was also a member of the American Society of Magicians.[6] He died in late 1945 in Eastham, Massachusetts, exact date uncertain.[7][8]

Memory trainer

Foster left employment at one of the largest manufacturing houses in Baltimore to become the business manager for a Professor Alphonse Loisette (aka Marcus Dwight Larrowe), a lecturer and promoter of systems and methods purporting to develop and improve a person’s memory skills. Foster resigned in April 1888, wishing not to be associated with Loisette’s unethical personal and business practices and accusing him of being a “humbug and a faud”.[9] Foster subsequently joined William Joseph Ennever and others in a similar business venture, the Pelman School of Memory Training, a correspondence school, for which he delivered lectures and wrote training materials, most notably The Secret of Certainty in Recollection - The Pelman-Foster System, a book of five correspondence lessons dating from around 1905.[10]

Bibliography

Although he also wrote fiction and contributed short stories to magazines, his most prolific work was on the subject of card, dice and table games being author of over 50 such books covering every imaginable card game: euchre, poker, conquian, rummy, whist, auction bridge, contract bridge and other bridge variations, and many more. Foster also wrote on other games such as mahjong, dice, chess, and dominoes.

  • Foster's Whist Manual: A Complete System of Instruction in the Game. New York, Brentano (1890)
  • Foster's Bridge (1902)
  • Foster's Common Sense in Whist (1898) at Internet Archive
  • Foster, Robert Frederick: Poker (1901)
  • Foster, Robert Frederick: Foster's Practical Poker (1904)
  • Foster, Robert Frederick: Pocket Laws of Poker (1910)
  • Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Games (1909)
  • Cooncan (Conquián): A Game of Cards also Called "Rum" A full-text reproduction of Foster's 1913 publication in electronic form now in the public domain. See also the 2007 Edition, ISBN 0-548-31771-2.
  • Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of All the Indoor Games Played at the Present Day With Suggestions for Good Play, a Full Code of Laws. Illustrative Hands. And a Brief Statement of the Doctrine of Chance as Applied to Games (1897)
  • Foster's Modern Bridge Tactics: A Complete Exposition of the Lates Theories of Four-card Suit Bids, Approaching Bids, and Suit Distribution, Together with an Entirely New Theory of the No-trumper (1925)
  • Foster's Pirate Bridge: The Latest Development of Auction Bridge with the Full Code of the Official Laws (1917) ISBN 978-1-4446-4360-2

Contributions to whist and bridge

Foster invented or developed:

  • Self-playing Cards for Whist, Self-playing Cards for Bridge, and an improved design for Whist Markers.
  • The Foster Echo, an unblocking play against notrump intended to show count.[1]
  • The Rule of Eleven. Foster claims to have invented the Rule of Eleven in the winter of 1880-81.[11] The rule is explained in the first edition of his Foster’s Whist Manual of 1890[12] and is a means for opener's partner to infer how many cards held by declarer are higher in rank than the card led; likewise, declarer can infer the same information about his right-hand-opponent's holding.
  • The first set of laws for contract bridge.[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Francis, Henry G., Editor-in-Chief; Truscott, Alan F., Executive Editor; Francis, Dorthy A., Editor, Sixth Edition (2001). The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge (6th ed.). Memphis, TN: American Contract Bridge League. p. 645. ISBN 0-943855-44-6. OCLC 49606900. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Who's Who Among North American Authors, Volume IV - 1929-1930, Golden Syndicate Publishing Company, Los Angeles, California, page 369.
  3. ↑ "FOSTER, Robert Frederick". Who's Who, 59: p. 627. 1907. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge. Edited by Ely Culbertson. Published by The Bridge World, 1935; pages 162-163.
  5. ↑ Biographical profile of R.F. Foster on the CardsandDominoes.com website
  6. ↑ Other clubs included: Savage, National Liberal (London), Pacific Coast Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Wheatley Hills Golf Club, Deauville Beach Club; from Who's Who Among North American Authors, Volume IV - 1929-1930, Golden Syndicate Publishing Company, Los Angeles, California, page 369
  7. ↑ Times Magazine, First issue of 1946; retrieved from the bridgeguys.com website
  8. ↑ "St. George Event Recalls A Towering Figure in Game". New York Times. January 21, 1965. Retrieved 2011-03-18. "This year marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Robert Frederick Foster, who, for 60 years, had been one of the great figures in whist and bridge. He was a world authority on card games and his "Foster's Complete Hoyle was placed in the time capsule at the 1939 New York World's Fair." 
  9. ↑ Loisette Exposed, pages 217 to 220.
  10. ↑ Ennever family history website on The Pelman School of Memory, The Pelman Institute and Pelmanism
  11. ↑ Foster’s Whist Manual published by Frederick A. Stokes (London), 1890; footnote on page 36.
  12. ↑ The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 6th Edition, published by the American Contract Bridge League in 2001 notes on page 399 that while Foster is generally credited with first writing about the rule in 1890, "it is said to have been discovered independently by E.M.F. Benecke of Oxford at about the same time".
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