Editing Charles Goren (section)

==Early years==

Goren was born in what is now Khotyn, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, to a Jewish family. His parents were Jacob and Rebecca Goron, a writer and a homemaker.<ref> https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/goren-charles-henry</ref> His father emigrated in 1903 with the family possibly coming later.<ref>ancestry.com.  Petition for Naturalization of Jacob Goron filed February 17, 1913</ref>  He earned a law degree at [[McGill University]] in [[Montreal]] in 1923. While he was attending McGill, a girlfriend (or "a young hostess")<ref name=truscott/> laughed at his ineptness at the game of bridge, thus motivating him to immerse himself in a study of existing bridge materials.<ref>Goren and Olsen (1965), p. 10.</ref>

After graduation, he practiced law for 13 years in Philadelphia.<ref name=truscott/> The growing fame of contract bridge player [[Ely Culbertson]], however, prompted Goren to abandon his original career choice to pursue bridge competitions, where he attracted the attention of [[Milton Work]], an American authority on many card games including [[contract bridge]]. Work was impressed by Goren's knowledge of the game and hired Goren to help him write his bridge articles and columns.<ref name="truscott" /><!-- sentences remain from the wholly unreferenced version prior to 2014-12-07 -->

Work was one of many strong bridge players based in Philadelphia around the 1920s. By 1928 he had popularized the 4–3–2–1 [[Hand evaluation|point count]] system for evaluating balanced hands (now sometimes called the Work count). His chief assistant [[Olive Peterson]] and young Goren established a partnership as players.<ref name=truscott4/>

As a player Goren's "breakthrough" was the 1937 Board-a-Match Teams championship (now called The [[Reisinger]] National Bridge Championship) which he won with three other Philadelphia players: [[John R. Crawford|John Crawford]], [[Charles J. Solomon|Charles Solomon]], and [[Sally Young]].<ref name="truscott" />

Goren dominated the competitive bridge circuit ultimately becoming world champion at the [[Bermuda Bowl]] in 1950 and remained a competitive player until about 1962 after which he focused on writing and teaching bridge.