You began by learning to count points, but that only got you so far. Then, someone introduced you to a new idea, Losing Trick Count. Better in theory, sure. But how do you use it? A response shows at least 6 high-card points, but how many losers? How many of these mysterious 'cover cards'? What's the range? Plus, something just seems wrong with the whole thing! How can A 3 2 be just as good as Q 3 2? That cannot be right! Counting Goren high-card points is much easier, and is a very reasonable gauge for bidding square hands. When things start to get distributional, however, you know that you need a better way to evaluate your hand. The concept of winners, losers, and cover cards really seems to be the right path, allowing you to escape from counting points into the world of counting TRICKS! In Winners, Losers and Cover Cards, Ken Eichenbaum reveals not only the secrets an expert would use to better evaluate the real power (or weakness) of your hand, but also how to use this knowledge to your advantage in a myriad number of ways. The author explains a fresh take on popular conventions and treatments, within the context of real auctions facing you at the table, and introduces novel methods, allowing you to maximize the benefit of your new understanding.

Patrick Jourdain's Problem Corner has been a popular regular feature of Bridge Magazine in the UK for many years.

This collection of challenging declarer-play problems has been selected from the best of the material that has appeared in the magazine, and will be welcomed by advanced players.

This book was first published in 1959 and quickly became one of the classic textbooks for the playing of bridge. The original version has been out of print for some time and the book is now being republished in its first revision in 50 years. In its new modernised form, bridge players will find the ideas much more accessible, while handy end-of-chapter quizzes reinforce the concepts.

BRIDGE GAME SUMMARY Easy Reference & Game Companion Bridge Game Summary provides a brief overview of the bridge game. It is a great game table companion for all bridge players. Need help bidding? Or, responding to a bid? Just check the "bidding" section. Want to know what card to lead? Check "playing the hand" section. Need a reminder of the most popular bridge conventions? They are all there when you need them. Need to know how to write the score and how many bonus points are awarded for a grand slam? Check "keeping the score" section. Bridge Game Summary combines the easy reference of color tables with a brief explanation of how to play the game. It's the best of both worlds for beginners and casual bridge players alike.

Bridge players are taught numerous rules to help them make good bidding decisions, rules that involve things like point count, losing trick count, the Law of Total Tricks and a host of other evaluation methods. But eventually everyone discovers that there are more situations where these rules don't apply than where they do. This book fills a gap in bridge literature by discussing how to make decisions in the bidding, especially in competitive auctions. Think about your own game. Are you sure you know when it's right to be aggressive and when to pull back? When to bid on and when to double the opponents? When to push forward for a slam and when to be content with reaching game? This book goes through the factors you need to be aware of in your hand and in the bidding around you (partner's and the opponents') that will help you get these decisions right more often. Filled with real-life examples, practical advice and helpful quizzes, this book will help any reader become a better bidder.

Larry Cohen is one of the most successful American bridge players of the last 20 years. In My Favorite 52, Cohen presents a collection of his favorite personal bridge moments, using an intimate 'over-the-shoulder' presentation, taking the reader through more than 60 deals (no, not just 52!). Each deal is important to him in some way, or technically interesting, or just plain fun.

The book's interactive style allows the reader to follow bidding and play, and even to make their own decisions at key points. Read this book for fun, or study it in depth and learn from it - whichever you choose to do, you will find it hard to put down.

The stories and anecdotes in this collection have one thing in common: in every case, the contract is 6NT! The first half of the book features the world's finest players at work, tackling all manner of 6NT contracts - some commendable, some truly awful. You will have a chance to plan your play in these contracts yourself before seeing what fate befell the original declarer. The second half of the book contains humorous short stories, featuring many of David Bird's well-loved characters: the bridge-crazy monks of St. Titus Monastery, the nuns of St. Hilda's Convent, and the Rabbi and his entourage. There is further action from Cholmeley School, from the missionaries whose main task in life is to convert the Bozwambi tribe to the Acol bidding system, and even some tales involving Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham and the much-maligned Sir Guy of Gisburne. Although some of these stories have been published in bridge magazines around the world, none of them have previously appeared in book form.

Prison life has a silver lining for Tim - bridge. An expert player, he finds that his ability earns him unlooked-for respect amongst his fellow-prisoners. This is a bridge novel filled with unusual characters and great deals - and a bridge game that gives new meaning to the term 'cut-throat'!

This is the fifth (and according to the author, the very last - but don't hold your breath!) edition of what is acknowledged to be the definitive book on a convention that every serious player uses. Completely revised and updated from the previous version, this newest version contains even more leading-edge ideas, and is full of examples, quizzes and practice hands. A must for the tournament player. Includes, among many other features: - Why you should play 1430 and 3014 RKB responses, and when - The extensions of RKB: the queen ask, the specific king ask, and more - How to handle voids, as asker or responder - RKB in minor-suit auctions - 60 practice hands for you to bid with your favorite partner This is the only book that explains every facet of one of the most popular conventions in modern bridge. Eddie Kantar (Santa Monica, CA) is one of the most popular and prolific bridge writers in the world. A winner of two World Championships, and a member of the Bridge Hall of Fame, his many books include Modern Bridge Defense, Advanced Bridge Defense, the hilarious Kantar on Kontract, and of course, Roman Keycard Blackwood. His work appears regularly in many bridge magazines around the world.

At one time the game was even bigger than baseball. Today bridge is played by more than twenty-five million people in the United States alone, with Bill Gates, a sitting Supreme Court justice, and the guys from Radiohead among its devotees. In this spirited homage, Edward McPherson recounts the colorful history of the game and his attempts to master its mysteries in time to compete at the North American Bridge Championships--despite being barely able to shuffle cards, let alone play competitively. Insightful, funny, and steeped in respect, "The Backwash Squeeze" is an affectionate view of a grand game by an outsider trying to make his way into the inner circle.

Why aren't you an expert bridge player? What makes a bridge expert, and why does he or she always come out on top compared to the average club player? No, it's not the ability to execute esoteric squeezes and endplays - they simply don't come up enough to account for the way the experts consistently win against weaker opposition. It's much more basic than that. This book contains a collection of deals that illustrate the difference between the expert player and the would-be expert. These illustrate the kinds of decisions that will come up in every club game, situations in bidding, play and defense where the amateur will often go wrong, but the expert never will. A study of the concepts in this book will take the reader a long way from amateur status towards actually becoming an expert player.

The late Terence Reese, perhaps the greatest bridge writer of all time, introduce the "over-the-shoulder" style of bridge writing in his classic "Play These Hands With Me." In this wry homage to the master, Horton leads the reader through a plausibly logical line of play on each instructive deal, but usually a line that ends in failure. In each post-mortem, the "expert" realizes how he could have improved on his play, and (usually) made his contract. The deals are all from top-class events, which prove to be a remarkably fertile source of such material. A book filled with subtle humor and great bridge.

Improve your memory, improve your game! The aim is to encourage players to improve their bridge by solving the puzzles This challenging book of puzzles will help you to improve your game by concentrating on defensive play. By the time you have solved the last puzzle, your astonished partners will be well advised to secure copies for themselves. Whatever the situation, this splendid selection of defensive play puzzles will test your skills - and you will learn from the detailed explanation that Ron Klinger gives on the page following each puzzle.

1927. In this volume, Milton C. Work, Member of the Committee on Bridge Laws of the American Whist League; a member of the Card Committee of the Whist Club, New York, The Racquet Club, Philadelphia, The Cavendish Club, New York; Editor, Auction Bridge Magazine, shortens the road to winning bridge and aids new players in quickly grasping the essentials of Auction Bridge, and serves as a concise and dependable guide for experts.

Endplays are an aspect of bridge declarer play that many intermediate players think are beyond them. Yet while they can be extremely complex, the basic principles are not. Five years ago, David Bird wrote "Bridge Squeezes for Everyone," a book about an even more complex topic that has become a modern classic. Using the same straightforward, conversational style with recaps and quizzes that characterized the earlier book, this new title will make endplays understandable to many readers who have been afraid to attempt to learn them.

This is an author who has been there and seen it all. As a multiple world champion, and former president of the World Bridge Federation, no one is better placed to discuss the big issues that face the game today. He can talk authoritatively about cheating at the top levels of the game, destructive bidding systems, sponsorship, professional players, and the other big issues - and he does. He opens the closets of the bridge world, and shows us the skeletons inside that no one wants to talk about. Wolff names names: as the title implies, he has always been prepared to call a spade and let the chips fall where they may. Wolff describes his own life and career in bridge with a brutally honest and emotional appraisal. This book will receive major review attention, and will be as controversial as one would expect a book from this author to be.

"I had just learned standard bridge bidding and was trying to learn 2/1. Every person that I played with had their own style and followed their interpretation of standard bidding. Then I met Bob Gish and he introduced me to his bidding system: The New Awakening. I could not believe how this system has helped me. I make better bids and get to good contracts."

Manish Dixit

Life Master

Chthonic, the bridge-playing computer is back! This time he is attempting to teach humans a little about the game of bridge - not in order to turn them into competent players, because he knows that is impossible. But he thinks he may be able to get the reader to the point where his mobile phone won't laugh at him behind his back (it does, you know). Each chapter of this wickedly funny book highlights a different 'human bridge error', and points out why and how it should be avoided. Chthonic Chthonic, the irascible bridge-playing computer, modestly describes himself as the world's best bridge player. Danny Kleinman Danny Kleinman of Los Angeles is a prolific bridge writer, theorist, professional player, and teacher, who is a regular contributor to several bridge magazines. He is a Contributing Editor of The Bridge World, and is one of the moderators of 'The Master Solvers' Club' in that magazine. He also writes about backgammon, another game which he plays at an expert level. Nick Straguzzi Nick Straguzzi of Mullica Hill, NJ, is a software analyst specializing in artificial intelligence and knowledge management. Nick has researched ways in which computer game theory could be applied to bridge, but concluded that it would be far easier to write about a perfect bridge-playing computer than to actually build one.

Professor Silver is back! The hero of "Tales out of School", "A Study in Silver", and "Bridge the Silver Way" takes on new opponents as the author finds fresh literary targets to lampoon. Yes, the man who brought us the Silver Certainty Principle, the Eastwood convention ("Do you feel lucky, partner?") and the concept of the supremacy of the heart suit in bridge now takes aim at (among many others): "The Matrix" ("Will you cut the red cards or the blue?"); "The Three Musketeers" ("All for one, all for me"); "All Quiet on the Western Front" ("Have you heard of the Geneva Convention?"). This new collection will keep Silver aficionados laughing all the way through the Christmas holiday season.

In bridge, the 'declarer' is the one who nominates which suit is trumps; his/her partner's hand becomes the 'dummy'. Every intermediate bridge player is familiar with the routine techniques of dummy play. What this book describes are less well-known stratagems that may save the day in non-routine situations.

This book gives the reader a chance to watch an expert play a number of hands, either as declarer or defender. Most of the hands come from the author's own experience in top-level play. As usual in this type of presentation, the reader is offered the opportunity to make his own decisions at critical points in the play, and will be able to learn from situations where an expert took a different line of play - rightly or wrongly! It is aimed at advanced skill levels.

Unique in the literature of the game, this book describes and classifies hundreds of tactics, stratagems and coups used during the play of the hand at bridge. Each technique is illustrated with an example deal, and its application fully explained. The topics run the gamut from the simplest finesses to the most complex squeeze positions, and cover literally everything in between. This book will be an essential component of any bridge library.

In this book, learning to recognize and appreciate threat cards plays a central role as you begin to understand how squeeze play operates. It won't be long before you can look at a layout and begin to imagine how the East-West cards will need to lie in order for your squeeze to be successful. Very soon, you will get to the point where simple squeezes are a part of your regular bridge arsenal. The first edition of this book was named Book of the Year in 2006 by the American Bridge Teachers Association. DR. JULIAN LADERMAN is a retired mathematics and computer science professor (Lehman College, City University of New York). He has written two books that have won the American Bridge Teachers' Association Book of the Year Award. His first book A Bridge to Simple Squeezes won in 2006 and A Bridge to Inspired Declarer Play won in 2009. For many years he wrote the bridge column for The Bronx Journal.