On Mar 25, 7:47 pm, David Babcock wrote:
the Harkness book is one of the very first books to introduce
the "Goren Standard American" system of bidding. The system under
which Ace = 4, King = 3, Queen = 2 and Jack = 1 is introduced on page
72 of the Harkness Book.

From Milton's Work's _Contract Bridge_ (1927):

"Reckon an Ace as 4, a King as 3, a Queen as 2, and a Jack as 1." (p.
28).

On a related matter, I have spoken with Amazon about the
misattribution of the authorship of the Harkness reprint to Goren in
the listing on their site; their customer support representative
appreciated the information, repeated everything back to me (at his
suggestion), and said he is forwarding the information to a
supervisor. Perhaps Mr. Sloan's hope that the error will be corrected
is just a bit closer to realization.

David

Amazon Customer Support is the galactic opposite of eBay. They
actually listen and then act on the information. I manage several
forums, of which one is for book sellers. 99% of the members speak
well of Amazon.