On Mar 25, 6:47 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

Thank you very much. It certainly bothers me that they list Charles
Goren as the author rather than Harkness first because Goren is much
more popular among bridge players and readers and some will feel no
doubt feel misled when they find out that the book is actually by
Harkness, and secondly because I reprinted the book primarily as a
tribute to Harkness since I have also reprinted two of his chess
books.

Thank you again.

Sam Sloan