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"Battle of the Century." Dismayed by Culbertson's lucrative preeminence, a dozen less publicized experts headed by aging Sidney Lenz banded together to publish an "Official System." Culbertson publicly laid down a challenge: he would bet $10,000 to $1,000 that, in a match of 150 rubbers, he and his wife Josephine, using the Culbertson system, would beat Lenz and any partner, using the Official System. Under Culbertson's relentless public needling, Lenz reluctantly accepted the challenge, chose as his partner hefty Oswald Jacoby, later famed as an expert on canasta and poker as well as bridge. Named as referee was Lieut. Alfred M. Gruenther, a West Point instructor and part-time bridge tournament director who rose to become Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in 1953-56.*
Billed as the "Bridge Battle of the Century," the four-week Lenz-Culbertson match was the most publicized card joust in history. The wire services had top reporters covering the match from start to finish, papers put out extras on results, and readers who could not tell a doubleton from a double followed the daily point score. Lenz and Jacoby got off to an early lead, but at the end of the 150th rubber the Culbertson partnership was ahead by 8,980 points, and Lenz paid up. That ended any small remaining doubt about whether Culbertson was the U.S.'s No. 1 bridge authority. He and his system reigned supreme from 1932 until the late 1940s, when he was pushed off the throne by a new man with a new system. The man: Charles Goren. His system: point-count bidding.
The Rough Edges. Just as bridgedom's envious experts now call Goren's hard-earned credentials into question, so a younger, hungrier Charles Goren sniped at Ely Culbertson. Ely, cried Goren in the early days, was all through—and had never been really great anyhow. The inner drive that carried Charlie Goren past Culbertson was sharpened by the rough edges of poverty in his Philadelphia childhood. The son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants, he grew up in a brawling district of "Jews, Irish and Irish." Charlie made up for small size with pugnacity, endurance, and indifference to pain. Recalls his brother Edward, a Philadelphia clothing distributor: "Charlie walked around with mumps for two weeks and never knew it. People kept telling my mother how healthy he looked, fat face and all."
Poverty left one mark on Charlie that the years have not erased: he has a nickel-nursing streak in him, even now that he rakes in a great many nickels. When he decided to donate a bridge trophy in his name several years ago, he bought an ancient horse-racing cup, had the old inscription chiseled off to make way for the new.