Since mid-nineteenth century when Charles Goren popularized the point -count system of hand evaluation and bridge bidding, a system that became known widely as "Standard American," there have been significant advances in the art of bidding, advances that have been time-tested and proven effective. Unfortunately "Standard American" did not keep pace.
Early point-count standards undervalue many hands. Furthermore, many traditional bidding rules became obsolete and fell by the wayside as new ideas were created, time-tested and adopted by the most innovative players. Prominent among the new methods are five-card majors, limit raises, preemptive two-level openers, the Stayman convention, and a reconstruction of the entire notrump bidding scheme.
Standard American 21 presents an integrated, modern contract bridge bidding system. The entire system can be adopted quite readily by players of intermediate skills and beyond. Here for the first time bridge players have the tools to achieve real precision bidding from part-score through game and slam.

Each book this series is a collection of bridge problems that 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 the Bridge Technique series (Bird & Smith).

Paul Thurston's bridge textbook 25 Steps to Learning 2/1 (December 2004; ISBN 9781894154468) was an instant bestseller, winning the 2003 American Bridge Teachers' Association Book of the Year award. In a tantalizing postscript to that book, he promised a sequel, one that would cover 'the rest of the story' for those who wanted to add modern sophistication to their 2/1 bidding. Here at last he delivers, and the long wait has been worth it. The book describes an understandable and playable version of today's most popular system, something that has been missing from bridge literature until now. 2/1 game forcing ('two-over-one game forcing') is a bidding system in modern contract bridge structured around various formulaic responses to a one-level opening bid. Many improving bridge players enjoy the benefits of the 2/1 system.

A collection of bridge problems which provide a fun way to practice an important play technique. This is part of a twelve book series that will add an extra dimension to the Bridge Technique series (Bird & Smith), which won the American Bridge Teachers' Association Book of the Year award in 2002.

With this handy little book, you can Learn a new convention, or extend your knowledge of it Learn and practice by yourself using the unique quiz format Practice with your partner using the specially selected example hands, and compare your results with the recommended auctions Barbara Seagram is a master bridge teacher who owns and runs one of North America's largest bridge schools, in Toronto, Canada. Her previous books include the bestselling 25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know (with Marc Smith). Linda Lee is an expert bridge player and a bridge journalist whose previous work includes You Have to See This (with Andrew Diosy).

No trump openings, and the constructive auctions that follow them, are two of the most neglected areas in bridge literature. Following on from his popular articles in the ACBL Bulletin, Kleinman discusses the principles behind no trump bids and re-bids in a variety of situations, emphasising the ideas and concepts rather than attempting to teach a series of rigid rules. A must for any duplicate player.

A collection of hands that take the reader through a year at the author's (fictional) bridge club. The characters make all the common errors, so the author manages to instruct while he entertains. For fans of Stewart's enormously popular syndicated bridge column, in which these characters appear regularly.

Discover a new world, where you can bridge the gap from virtual to reality. The world of Internet Bridge. You will meet people from all over the world. Get to know them and their cultural differences. You will find they are nice, intelligent, interesting, and very humorous men and women who have enriched my life. Bridge brought us together, and many have become my friends. My partners have ranged in age from 14 to 94. I have played with doctors, lawyers, and an Indian Chief. There have also been teachers, writers, engineers, miners, ranchers, and scientists in every field. I have played with Bill Gates. People I would never have met within the boundaries of my real life. This is not an all-inclusive list. This is a book for bridge players and everyone else. Internet Bridge has some different rules, which are quickly explained, as are basic facts about the game. However, my focus is on the people. You will find yourself smiling, laughing, and touched by their stories. Variety is the spice of life and you will find it here.

"Bill Gates Finds Duplicate Bridge a 'Window' to Fun."
--ACBL Bulletin, August 20, 2000

"Based on Barbara Seagram's best-selling 25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know, "each book in this series offers the opportunity to learn more about a common convention and to practice it on your own or with a favorite partner.

This book covers basic bridge principles relating to all three aspects of bridge - bidding, defending and declaring a hand. I have imparted ideas that I have learned in over twenty years of playing high-level tournament and rubber bridge.

These wonderful agreements and gadgets turn your everyday bidding system into something personal, something that fits the exact style that you and your partner want to play. And now you can choose from some seventy expert-level ideas to add to your bidding arsenal, quickly and painlessly. In this book you will find: 'Basic Conventions' -- the Rest of the Story: find out how top-level players have turbo-charged such standard conventions as Stayman, Jacoby and Texas Transfers, Drury, Weak Jump Shifts, and more. 'Bread and Butter Conventions': some conventions that are standard with most experts but may not be for you, such as Smolen, Slow Arrival, Italian Cuebids, the best defences to Multi and Bergen Raises, Retransfers, Clarifying Cuebids, and others; 'Defensive and Cardplay Conventions': learn more about Trump Suit Preference, Obvious Shift carding, the Slam Spade Double, the Lead-directing Pass, and many more. 'Fine Arts Conventions': not for the faint of heart, some of these ideas will really make you sit up and take notice. Would you enjoy playing Last Train to Clarkesville, Yellow Rose of Texas, Vacant Doubletons, Double Keycard Blackwood, Trent Weak Two-bids, or the XYZ Convention, for example? Read this book and find out!

Based on Barbara Seagram's bestselling book, 25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know, each book in this series offers the opportunity to learn more about a common convention and to practice it on your own or with a favorite partner.

Even social bridge can be like a roller-coaster, where partners rocket up and down together from euphoria to 'you idiot' - and the pressures of the tournament game make it worse still. Indeed, when a married couple play bridge together, they tend to drag the marriage along with them -- for better or worse. For the answer to the social dilemma of how to survive bridge games with your spouse, read this book. The author has been happily married for many years to her favourite bridge partner, and knows whereof she speaks. Readers will learn to deal with such situations as premarital bridge, bridge with another couple, disaster recovery, romantic weekends, mid-life crises and even children as the critical phases of a bridge marriage are subjected to Ms. Teukolsky's witty and engaging analysis and advice.

Do you remember the first few times you played bridge? To get you started, a friend probably gave you a few helpful hints -- perhaps one of the ones listed to the left. There are many such general guidelines for bridge players -- some of them valuable, some not. But these are the Bridge Myths, not the Bridge Rules -- because they all have exceptions and none should be followed blindly. In reading this book you will get to see what it is about each guideline that makes it so useful; more importantly, you will also learn to recognize the times when you should ignore it. DECLARER'S MYTHS - Draw trumps straight away - Hold up an ace - Win as cheaply as possible - Play low in second seat - Eight ever, nine never - Ruff losers in the dummy - Finesse whenever you can - Play on your longest suit first - Lead towards high cards - Ruff the defenders' winners - Lead low to a trick - Run your longest suit - Leave the big decision until last DEFENDER'S MYTHS - Third hand high - Return partner's suit - Cover an honor with an honor - Second hand low - Capture an honor with an honor - Lead through strength - Discard from your weakest suit - Score a ruff when you can - Never give a ruff-and-sluff - Split your honors - Follow low when a trick is lost - Don't ruff partner's winner David Bird, who lives near Southampton, England, has written more than 100 books on the game. Despite spending much of the year travelling, he still finds time to write new stories every month for a host of magazines around the world, usually featuring his best-known characters, the monks of St. Titus Abbey. He is also a regular commentator on BBO broadcasts of top-level competitions.

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.

Kantar's two-book series on Bridge Defense (Modern Bridge Defense and Advanced Bridge Defense) won an ABTA Book of the Year Award in 1999. This newer book addresses a more popular topic, using a similar approach. While not a comprehensive treatment of declarer play at bridge, this book deals with specific topics exhaustively, and will be invaluable to the improving player: finesses (when and how to take them, and equally importantly, when to avoid taking them), endplays, eliminations, issues with entries, suit establishment, and counting. Designed to be used by bridge teachers, or by students learning on their own, this book like its predecessors 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. Kantar's various beginner books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, not least because of his unique writing style and the humor that he introduces into the learning process. Eddie Kantar 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.

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.

Following the LAW, the sequel to To Bid or Not to Bid, was published in 1994, and took the basic concepts explained in the first book to a higher level of sophistication, while giving many practical examples from expert play of how to use the Law of Total Tricks correctly. Both books are must-reads for every improving bridge player.

To be successful, a bridge player has to think like a detective, tracking down the distribution of the unseen hands. Although many players are oblivious to them, the tell-tale clues are there, just waiting to be noticed. They are there, just waiting to be noticed. They are there in the auction and in the opening lead. Every time a defender plays a card, declarer receives information. Similarly, everything that declarer does can be turned to advantage by alert defenders. There is even vital intelligence to be gained by thinking about what a player does not do! In this book, you will learn where to look for these clues, and more importantly, how to draw the correct inferences from them. From there, it is only a short step to making bids and plays based on those inference, and thereby becoming a much better player.

Squeezes are an aspect of bridge declarer play that many intermediate players think they will never grasp. Yet while squeezes can be extremely complex, the basic principles of squeeze play are not. This is the first comprehensive book on squeeze play since Clyde E Love's classic 'Bridge Squeezes Complete', and much more approachable. Using the same straightforward, conversational style with recaps and quizzes that characterised the 'Bridge Technique' series, this book will make squeezes understandable to many readers who have been afraid to attempt to learn them.

Defence is the most difficult part of bridge, and for most players, the hardest part of defence is figuring out what kind of strategy they should be pursuing. In this book, the reader is shown step-by-step how to visualise declarer's cards from the bidding and play, and then how to use this information to form a plan for the defence. This book is based on Jim Priebe's popular articles 'Visualisation on Defence' which appeared in the ACBL Bulletin in early 2001.

Quiz books are always popular among bridge players. In this one, British author Julian Pottage has compiled a set of challenges that will test the reader's ability both as declarer and on defense. The hands are organised by theme, so readers are able to concentrate on a particular aspect of card-play if they wish.

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.

Bridge Today Digest recently celebrated its first anniversary (and 100th issue) as an Internet-based "bridge-zine." It is renowned for its practical advice, its wonderful bridge stories, and the wry humor and personal touch of its editors. For this collection, they have selected the very best pieces from their first year, and have come up with a compendium that every bridge player can read, enjoy, and learn from. It includes short pieces from world-renowned writers, questions and comments from readers (and the editors' responses to them!), and a wealth of deals, anecdotes and advice from the editors. A great holiday gift.

Intended for intermediate players, these three books complete 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.