In this book, the pompous and self-important Abbot spots a chance to take part in that Holy Grail of Bridge - the Bermuda Bowl world championships. Casting all ethics aside, he pursues this dream. Partnered by the Parrot, with the Witchdoctor, Mbozi, Mrs Okoku and Miss Nabooba as team-mates, he travels to India's Chennai and faces many of the world's real-life players. Regular followers of David Bird's work will know what to expect - a first-rate mixture of amazing bridge, entertaining characters and sparkling dialogue.

'One of the best introductory books I have come across is Basic Bridge. I recommend it to beginners and teachers alike' The European 'By far the best' Bridge Plus This is a definitive Acol textbook, equally valuable to rubber or duplicate bridge players. Set out as a course which can be used in conjunction with bridge classes or as a self-teacher, the book covers all the basic principles of bidding and play and is packed with exercises and quizzes on everything that has been taught. Recommended as the ideal textbook for learning the game, Basic Bridge will continue to be the standard beginner's guide to rubber and duplicate bridge for the foreseeable future. If you only ever buy one bridge book it has to be Basic Bridge.

Runner-up in the beginner/novice category of the American Bridge Teachers Association 2020 Book of the Year Awards. Bridge is a hugely popular pastime enjoyed by millions, and yet whole books have been written about single aspects of the game, and learning the seemingly complex rules and language can be a daunting idea. So this is the essential guide to beginning your journey and getting in on the fun, covering everything you need to know to get started and progress, from bridge basics, language and no-trump declarer play to analysing hands and working with trump suits. Defence play is then covered before going into bidding essentials and further bidding techniques and conventions. Keeping score and advice on taking things further rounds off this invaluable guide for the beginner. Clear explanations and examples make learning easy, and fresh writing from seasoned expert Mark Horton keeps things interesting, while a glossary of terms is a handy at-a-glance reminder of the meaning of key words and phrases. Suitable for standard playing methods used worldwide.

This book shows you how to improve your bridge at both a social and competitive level. Clear examples explain the detail of modern Acol bidding. This will enable the reader to plan and reassess their campaign step-by-step and calculate with precision who holds which cards. Guidance is also given on how and when to obstruct or bluff, how to pinpoint the best leads and steal the best contracts, and ways to think strategically under pressure. Unique at-the-table charts - designed to foster partnership understanding used appropriately at home, club or class - summarise key bids.

Regarded as one of the best ever written on the topic of signaling in the game of bridge, this book will help you defend better regardless of your experience or skill level. It explains several ways to describe your holding which are commonly used by experts but not generally known.

It compares new methods with old, including the pros and cons of upside-down versus standard signaling. It explains how to draw inferences, not only from partner's signals, but also from what he fails to do. Even if you are an expert and think there is nothing about defensive signals you don't already know, you will probably see a few situations you haven't thought about and discover how other experts handle them.

Originally published in 1995, this book has been unavailable for more than 20 years.

This latest edition of an outstanding book contains some new tips which reflect the changes in the game since the original publication in 1987. Learning from bitter experience at the bridge table is a slow, painful and often costly business. The 100 winning tips are designed to cover specific situations in bidding, play and defence - the sort of problems that arise over and over again in everyday play, providing a painless substitute for experience.

As Hugh Kelsey says in his introduction, the brilliant card player achieves his results with a combination of logic and flair. And although many people may think flair plays a disproportionate part, the expert player, in fact, produces his sometimes unbelievable results almost entirely by the application of logic. LOGICAL BRIDGE PLAY teaches you just how to apply logic to your card play in making the correct inferences and deductions, and in assessing the timing - the opportunity to become a master player is yours for the taking.

Played around the world - according to one famous player, if you play bridge, you will make friends wherever you go. If you want to bid accurately and achieve greatly improved results at the bridge table, you have to master the Losing Trick Count. It is a tried and tested method of hand evaluation which has stood the test of time. Ron Klinger, famous international player, author and teacher who has more books to his credit than many players have had good hands, has brought the LTC up to date by relating it to modern systems and conventions. Now in its fifteenth impression since original publication, this remarkable book is set to hold its place as the standard text on the Losing Trick Count.

The established classic on inferential reasoning in bridge. Deduction is the process of working out what logically follows from facts known or assumed. Psychologists rate deductive reasoning as central to human intelligence and Albert Dormer believes that it is the use of this faculty in bridge that gives players their satisfaction. So why do they so often fail to make the right deductions? The answer lies in correct thinking and in asking the right questions. Albert Dormer, internationally respected both as a player and as a writer of great distinction, shows how, through the use of deduction, bridge players can greatly enhance their card play and enormously increase their pleasure in this fascinating game. DORMER ON DEDUCTION is a brilliant book, lucidly written and packed with practical advice.

Conventions are a vital element of bidding in bridge. Unless they are easily and clearly understood they can be destructively dangerous. This book contains the most common conventions you are likely to encounter at the duplicate table, together with defensive measures you can take, plus countermeasures against each part of the defensive methods. Importantly, however, bridge continues to evolve. The material in the additional chapter covers the most recent developments in bridge bidding and will give you ideas for inclusion in your regular partnerships.

How many times have you found yourself defending and wriggling with anguish at having to discard apparently certain winners? Hugh Kelsey's target here is to help you to avoid such pain - and other agonies that a competent declarer may inflict. By developing your insights into the hidden possibilities in the lie and play of the cards, this book will make you a sought-after partner and a respected (and feared!) opponent.

Written for complete beginners, this book is based on material that Barbara Seagram uses in her own classes to introduce hundreds of new players to the game every year. The book will take readers to the point where they can enjoy a social game with friends or begin to explore their local bridge club.

Join the millions of people worldwide who have discovered the joy of bridge Killing Defence at Bridge is one of the great classics of bridge. It carries the mark of a genius and was the first in a series of major books written by Hugh Kelsey, who became internationally recognised as a leading authority on the analysis of bridge. He coupled this incisive thinking with a brilliant skill with words and made the most complex techniques in bridge sound simple and easy to grasp. Killing Defence features a foreword by Ron Klinger, one of bridge's leading teachers.

*Fancy yourself as a bridge player? This essential little book will show you how - in just 10 minutes. *Introduces the basic rules and techniques for bidding, declarer play and defence. *Useful bridge-table diagrams and quirky illustrations help the information stick.Bridge can sometimes look incredibly complicated and opaque. But that really isn't the case: it is a very easy game to learn. By the time you've read this invaluable little book, you'll be equipped with all the knowledge you need to take your partner and play your first game. In clear, easy-to-follow text, backed up with useful diagrams and illustrations, the author shows you exactly how bridge works, including bidding, defence, declaring and trumps. The book then goes on to more advanced strategies, including how to use your opponent's bidding to your advantage, and discusses the finer points of etiquette and conduct during a bridge game. Armed with the information in this book, you can go on to become a star bridge player - in double-quick time!

DEADLY DEFENCE covers every important aspect in bridge to make good bridge players into excellent defenders. It deals with opening leads (how to convey maximum information), defensive play when playing second hand, third hand and also when you are first to play to a trick, how to use signals more effectively and how to think on defence like an expert.

Detailing the fictitious exploits of the bridge-playing monks of St. Titus, this uproarious collection of adventures includes their involvement in the Gold Cup, the Hubert Phillips Bowl, the National intermonastery championship, and a mission to Africa to convert the Bozwambi tribe to the Acol system. Leading the way for a hugely entertaining series, this title is a tribute to the bridge and writing skills of two very distinguished authors.

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.

The army of enthusiastic followers of the bridge-playing monks of St. Titus, and their sometimes less than admirable Abbot, will have a field-day with this wonderful collection of stories David Bird has surpassed even himself with this sixth collection. His inimitable combination of scintillating bridge and humor will swell the ranks of the cognoscenti with equally delighted new recruits. Any bridge players who are not already happily enrolled, should join now!

Many competent players are frustrated by an apparent inability to score well at duplicate pairs. No matter how hard they try, the secret of success seems to lie forever beyond reach. The truth is that playing good bridge is not enough to win at pairs. The regular winners are those who have learned to adapt their strategy to take account of the vagaries of match-point scoring. A small shift in emphasis can make a big difference to results. In this book Australian expert Ron Klinger shows you how to do it. There are five sections covering constructive bidding, competitive bidding, opening leads, declarer play and defence, and they are full of well chosen example hands and sound advice. Put these tips into practice and your results are sure to improve.

This book is for you if you are serious about wanting to improve your duplicate skills. If you and your partner adopt most of the bidding methods recommended in the Guide to Better Duplicate Bridge and you regularly follow the guide-lines for declarer play and defence geared towards matchpoint thinking, you should find that your scores will improve significantly. Guide to Better Duplicate Bridge was first published in 1995 and this edition contains the standard methods which have proved successful in the past as well as recent developements, how they work, when they apply and why you can expect to obtain better scores by adopting them.

Readers of David Bird's humorous bridge stories will give a delighted welcome to this new addition to the celebrated series. As ever, the irascible Abbot makes his acerbic presence felt and the long-suffering fraternity diverts itself with much entertaining and excitingly interesting bridge. For more than 30 years, David Bird's tales of the bridge-crazy monks of St Titus have appeared in magazines around the world. In this tenth collection in book form, the pompous and self-important Abbot hosts a tricky visit from Monsignor Vecchio, a representative of the Vatican authorities. Everything must be done to ensure that the visitor, a very moderate bridge player, finishes well in the monastery duplicate. In another story, the Abbot visits the Convent of St Hilda's and is not overjoyed to be put in partnership with the 80-year-old Mother of Discipline. Regular followers of David Bird's work will know what to expect - a first-rate mixture of excellent bridge, entertaining characters and sparkling dialogue.

20 years ago, bridge writer Mike Lawrence published a series of short pamphlets for intermediate players with advice on various aspects of bidding and card play. Long unavailable, this material has now been revised, updated, and republished in three anthology volumes, each comprising about 10 of the original booklets. The topics here include: defence, including opening leads, signalling and third hand play, declarer play including endplays, simple squeezes, loser on loser plays, and timing. There is also a general discussion of the mistakes we all make in cardplay but need to avoid. This is the third volume in a three-volume series, 'Mike Lawrence Bridge Tips', based on bridge tips for intermediate players first published twenty years ago.

BRIDGE WORLD said of the first edition: 'is as good a quiz book as has ever appeared...Instead of examples of well-known ideas, the author presents truly practical situations...the questions emphasise those aspects of bridge play that are truly important at the table. Our quibbles with the analysis are minor, and we recommend the book as outstanding of its kind.'