Bridge Headquarters

Bridge Headquarters was a group of contract bridge experts organized in the early 1930s.

The group was organized in July 1931. The Bridge Headquarters was organized as a formal corporation under that name.^[1] Representing bridge's "old guard", it stood in opposition to Ely Culbertson's bidding system, and with a stated purpose of standardizing bridge bidding and play. To that end, the twelve members created a system it called the Official System.^[2][3]

Culbertson engaged in a war of words against the Bridge Headquarters, culminating in a 1931-1932 challenge match, the so-called "Bridge Battle of the Century", Culbertson and partners against Bridge Headquarters member Sidney Lenz and partners. Lenz lost, and the Official System was eventually superseded by other systems.^[2][3] However, Milton Work's point-count system, an important component of the Official System (and which stood in contrast to Culbertson's more cumbersome honor-count system), constituted the basis of Charles Goren's system which became by far the most popular system for the second half of the 20th century.^[4]

Members

• Sidney Lenz^[3]
• Milton Work^[3]
• Wilbur Whitehead^[3]
• Edward Valentine Shepard^[3]
• George Reith^[3]
• and seven others^[2][5]

References

Further reading

• "Differences between the Culberston and Official Systems" (Truscott & Truscott 2004, p. 50.)