What are the hallmarks of the expert player? Why do some players appear regularly at the top, winning rubber after rubber? By studying the techniques involved, you will be able to develop your skills in card-reading and card sense, mental rehearsal, the application of logic, mental concentration and relaxation, the assessment of probabilities, imaginative defence and when to employ deceptive plays - all are considered and used by the expert mind to achieve above-average results.

The "Financial Times'" weekly bridge columnist offers a completely revised and updated guide to sharpening bridge techniques, with more than 20 new tips and fresh material For the social bridge players who knows the rules and can play a reasonable hand, but want to refine their skills and improve their understanding of the game, this is the perfect guide. Packed with those gems of knowledge it usually takes years to accumulate, this invaluable book offers solid advice on how best to deal with a variety of situations. The tips range from simple to more advanced and all are clearly explained and are illustrated by an example hand and a reader's test. There is no simpler or more enjoyable way to improve bridge skills.

There is such an abundance of hints, tips and advice available to bridge players that when faced with a particularly difficult problem, we find ourselves scrambling to remember that crucial solution. In this book, Paul Mendelson explains that when you stop trying to remember what to do, but simply think instead, the answers to expert problems become more apparent, accessible and easier to apply at the table. Packed with tips, examples, hands to study and practise at the table, system improvements, guidance for maximising your score at duplicate pairs, and innovations just for you, for your partnership and group of bridge friends, this book will improve every reader's game markedly. Following on from Control the Bidding and Winning Ways to Play Your Cards, Thinking About Bridge will reinforce some of the key elements of the game, whilst adding a new expert dimension on understanding to each discipline, making the game more enjoyable and your performance more successful.

What is 'Standard' Bidding? This is an increasingly hard question to answer, but the proliferation of bridge on the Internet in pickup partnerships makes it imperative that someone does so. Perhaps the most popular natural system for the hundreds of thousands of online players worldwide is the Standard American Yellow Card, or SAYC. In this book, for the first time, SAYC is fully described and explained. This will be an invaluable to aid to anyone wanting to learn and understand SAYC, or anyone who simply knows the basics and is eager to fill in the missing pieces in their repertoire. Ned Downey and Ellen Pomer, the authors, are experienced bridge teachers and partners in the 'Bridge Forum' web site. Ned also teaches bridge via the Swan Games online playing site. Ellen is well-known on the Internet under her handle 'Caitlin', and regularly writes for various magazines on Internet bridge. This title gives basic introduction to the standard bidding conventions used on bridge websites.

Each book in this series is a collection of bridge problems which provide a fun way to practice and develop your skill in an important cardplay technique at bridge. These books are designed to add an extra dimension to the detailed instruction contained in Bridge Technique series (Bird & Smith), which won the American Bridge Teachers' Association Book of the Year award in 2002.

This book was originally published in 1985, and in this new edition are substantially revised and expanded. It is a collection of bridge problems designed to teach players how to think along the right lines as they approach the play or defense of a hand at the bridge table. Anyone who absorbs even a fraction of the ideas presented here will find himself making contracts that might have been defeated, and defeating contracts that might have been made.

Each book in the Test Your Bridge Technique is a collection of bridge problems which provide a fun way to practice and develop your skill in an important cardplay technique at bridge. These books are designed to add an extra dimension to the detailed instruction contained in Bridge Technique series (Bird & Smith), which won the American Bridge Teachers' Association Book of the Year award in 2002.

The "Deadly Defence" sequel goes deeper into the areas needed to become a deadly defender and a feared opponent, and provides a large number of practical problem hands set in quiz form Defense is the hardest part of bridge and even top-class players make mistakes much too frequently. The first part of this book gives insights into how to become a deceptive defender and how to recognize special defensive situations. The second part consists of a series of quizzes, with answers containing the logic and reasoning behind the correct play. After all the quizzes have been completed, readers will be amazed at how much more clearly they can see the winning defense at the table--and practice makes perfect if they tackle the problems again every three to six months. There is a lot of emphasis in the book on passing vital information so that a partner will be pointed into the right direction to find the winning play. Any bridge player will come away from this book with a greater insight into how to be an accomplished defender.

First published in 1988, this book has been out of print for several years. It's a mystery and a bridge textbook all in one, and accomplishes both exceptionally well. Based on the author's own experiences, and set in and around a Manhattan bridge club, the story includes many real-life characters whose names will be familiar to readers. First in a set that includes I Shot my Bridge Partner.

Intended for intermediate players, these books will eventually form a twelve-book series that takes the reader through the most important aspects of card-play technique at bridge. Each book is short and full of practical examples, and end-of-chapter quizzes reinforce the concepts. The series will appeal to beginners who are anxious to improve in stages, and to more experienced players who want to improve their knowledge of a specific aspect of card play.

Eddie Kantar's various beginner books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies in ten different languages, not least because of his unique style and the humor that he introduces into the learning process. Advanced Bridge Defense is intended to cover some of the more complex concepts of bridge defense for the modern advancing player, and will undoubtedly be a standard teaching tool and reference work for the next quarter-century. The topics covered here (planning the defense, inferences, various ways of counting the hand, developing extra trump tricks, falsecarding, and lead-directing doubles) are handled so thoroughly that even more advanced players will benefit from studying this book. Designed to be used by bridge teachers, or by students learning on their own, this book contains a host of features that help the student to grasp the material: clearly laid-out concepts, margin notes, practice hands, chapter-end quizzes, key-point summaries at regular intervals, and an index. It is intended to be read after the companion volume, Eddie Kantar Teaches Modern Bridge Defense.

Most of the contracts that you play are suit contracts. The presence of a trump suit provides more choices and also more dangers. This third book in the Card Play Made Easy series deals solely with trump contracts - and aims to impart skills that are not too difficult to recognise and to put into practice. The topics include how to create more winners and how to eliminate losers, how to spot the defenders' plans and how to thwart them and how to choose the best line when you have a number of options. Chapters 1-7 end with a collection of declarer problems on the relevant area and the recommended line of play for each. After the final chapter there is a lengthy quiz on all aspects of the book, plus the solutions. After studying the advice and deals in these pages, you are bound to become a more successful declarer.

Audrey Grant does it again with an amazing new book, Popular Conventions, the third book in the series, covers everything from playing at a party table to a tournament table. Popular Conventions teaches you the core conventions that will strengthen your game for sure. It introduces you to the Stayman convetions, Jacoby transfer bids, the strong artificial two club opening, Blackwood and Gerber. This book gives you a chance to get ahead and win!

The world's oldest, and leading, bridge magazine, The Bridge World, said of this book: 'Guide to Better Card Play is an elementary-through-intermediate textbook on declarer play and defence. Appropriately, the two phases of the book receive equal attention. The book can be used either as a self-teacher or as the basis of a series of lessons. In addition to the tutorial material, which is comprehensive, careful and instructive, the work is choc-a-bloc with summaries, reviews, quizzes and example deals. There is even an appendix that allows your foursome to set up the practice deals yourself. We like almost everything about this book, we especially liked the attention to partnership methods, the topic selection, and the carefully constructed lesson deals. There are other good texts at this level, but Klinger's book has twice as much material as similar works. This is a very good buy.'

This is a practical and comprehensive guide to playing Chess and Bridge from complete novice to advanced player level. It describes the fascinating history of world bridge championships, the great chess games, and the famous players who have popularized and developed the games we know today. It features over 1600 illustrations and photographs that take you step by step through from key basic principles of bridge to the opening, middlegame and endgame in chess. This superb instructional book will tell you everything you need to know about chess and bridge, from the fascinating histories of the games to how to play and master strategies to win. The first section, How to Play Chess, begins with rules of the game, and how to move each piece. The different strategies are explained, along with advice on how to manage the game as it progresses from opening through the middle game to the endgame. The second section, How to Play Bridge, begins with an explanation of the basic principles of bridge. This is followed by a detailed and colourful history of the game. Basic skills are all covered, from how to play and improve your game to advanced level tactics in bidding and card play.

Ron Klinger has assembled 50 great puzzles on declarer play, which will give the bridge player an opportunity to test their card-handling skills. Whatever the situation, whether high or low cards are held, the reader cannot fail but improve their game by tackling this splendid selection of declarer play puzzles - and learn from the detailed explanation that Ron Klinger gives on the following page.

Another title in the best-selling '25' series, using the same popular format. Over the last fifteen or so years, the 2/1 Game Forcing bidding method has gained substantial popularity, but for various reasons it is not taught in beginner classes. This book is therefore designed for players who are familiar with Standard bidding and are interested in switching to the 2/1 method. It covers basic concepts as well as the differences between 2/1 and Standard auctions, and includes a discussion of more advanced ideas and conventions that fit particularly well with 2/1 methods. Existing books on this topic (notably by Max Hardy and Mike Lawrence) are too advanced and/or too technical for this level of player.

To bid or not to bid - the perennial dilemma in competitive auctions. The easy answer to the question lies in the correct use of the Law of Total Tricks. The LAW has been part of bridge literature since the 1950s, but it was in this book that Larry Cohen brought it to the attention of the majority of bridge players. Still the most lucid explanation of the LAW ever published, this is a book that every bridge player needs to own, to read, to re-read, and to study in order to improve his results.