Winning Notrump Leads was a ground-breaking and very well-received book that used the power of computers to determine which opening leads work best against a variety of auctions at notrump. Using enhanced software, the authors now turn their attention to suit contracts. They generate millions of random deals, retaining those that match the chosen auction, for example 1S-2S-4S. By playing these deals automatically against each of the 13 possible opening leads from a given hand, they are able to discover which lead is most likely to beat the contract (also the best lead at matchpoint pairs). The authors provide insightful commentary to each result, answering timeless questions such as: When should I lead a trump? When is a doubleton a good opening lead? Should I lead differently against a partscore? Should I make an aggressive or a passive lead? Should I lead an ace against a small slam? Which leads work best against a grand slam? By using the number-crunching computer power available nowadays, there is no longer any need to rely on general opening-lead guidelines passed down by our ancestors. We think you will be surprised by many of the discoveries made during this investigation! DAVID BIRD (top) and TAF ANTHIAS were contemporaries at Cambridge University, both reading mathematics. They carried out research and development on software systems for over 30 years at IBM's UK Laboratories. In the 1970s they formed a successful bridge partnership, winning a number of national events. David is now one of the world's top bridge writers with 116 books to his name. Taf moved on to the USA, where he became a vice president of Cisco Systems. They have joined forces on this ground-breaking book.

Bridge hat den Ruf, ein Zeitvertreib fA1/4r Altere Damen zu sein. Ja, das ist es auch, aber Bridge ist noch viel mehr. Bridge ist ein Sport, Bridge ist eines der beliebtesten Kartenspiele der Welt, Bridge wird auch in Deutschland von A1/4ber 500 000 Menschen gespielt und es werden immer mehr. "Bridge fA1/4r Dummies" fA1/4hrt die Leser in die Welt dieses Denk- und Turniersports ein. Eddie Kantar, einer der weltweit bekanntesten Bridge-Autoren, erlAutert die grundlegenden Techniken und Strategien der Reiz- und der Spielphase. Er schildert hAufige Spielsituationen und gibt Tipps, wie man richtig mit ihnen umgeht. So liefert das Buch locker und amA1/4sant allerhand Informationen und Anregungen fA1/4r AnfAnger und fortgeschrittene Bridge-Spieler.

There are plenty of bridge books for serious players, and also numbers of books for raw beginners. However, very little has been published for the player who has completed the basic course and is now ready to add a few 'bells and whistles' to his or her game. This book conducts a thorough review of all the bidding ideas and concepts that are encountered in a beginner's course on bridge, and takes the reader beyond them, gently but firmly, to the second stage. The reader's ideas on bidding will be refined, and a number of useful conventions suitable for this level of player are described and recommended. The material has been written by two very experienced bridge teachers, and includes features such as end-of-chapter reviews and quizzes to help reinforce the concepts.

Rules are made to be broken, and the world of bridge is no exception. This is the first of a planned four-book series on cardplay. It deals with situations where the player who is on lead - defender or declarer, at the start of the deal or in the middle - needs to do something that involves ostensibly 'breaking the rules'. Not, obviously, the rules of bridge itself, but the well-tried adages that every player needs to be taught - the rules of thumbA" that work in a lot of cases. Knowing when to break those rules is one of the marks of an expert player.

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.

Just about every bridge player over forty has read Victor Mollo's Bridge in the Menagerie, a book that is on any list of the all-time top ten on the game. Towards the end of his life, Mollo continued to write stories about the same well-loved characters (Hideous Hog, Rueful Rabbit, Oscar the Owl and the rest), but they appeared in various magazines around the world, and if you weren't a subscriber, you didn't get to read them. This is the second collection of 'lost' Menagerie stories from one of the best-loved bridge writers who ever lived.

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.

There are definite benefits in allowing a One No-Trump opening to include a 5-card major. More and more experts at international level have adopted such a style.;If you are an ambitious player and are keen to improve the range of your no-trump bidding you will need a method to locate a 5-card major with opener or to discover a 4-4 major fit.;5-Card Major Stayman provides an easy structure that allows you to do just that and still enables you to use transfers to either major, even after a INT:2C response.

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.

You asked for it! 25 Conventions You Should Know has sold more than 250,000 copies since it was first published, and continues to top the bridge bestseller lists. Over the years, readers have suggested that it would be an even better book if it offered some way to practice what they had learned. Well, here it is: a brief summary of each of those 25 conventions, together with example hands which can be dealt out and used to apply your new knowledge. Bridge teachers and students will find this book invaluable.

With the publication of Sixpack, six keycard RKCB has come of age!

As soon you identify a double fit, don't ask for keycards - just "launch" and tell. In most cases, you can find out about keycards - all six - below the game level. Part I of the book lays out a set of basic rules for any casual partnership to apply quickly and easily. Part II gets more advanced and complex, but operates along the same principles. Apply Sixpack throughout your notrump structure and expand it to a wide range of standard bidding situations.

With many examples and four extensive quizzes for partners to practice the convention together, Sixpack gives the reader the experience and confidence to use the convention effectively at the table.

Bridge students quickly discover that basic bidding will only get them so far. To improve it is necessary to master a certain number of bidding conventions, and be prepared both to play them and to play against them. Each of the books in this series covers a number of useful conventions, explaining them carefully along with numerous examples and quizzes to help the reader understand what is being learned. Included in this book: Opening Leads, Attitude, Count, Suit Preference, Rule of Eleven, Present Count, 3rd Hand Play, 2nd Hand Play, Logic/Communication/Intuition and Review Hands. PATTY TUCKER (Dunwoody, Georgia) is an ABTA Master Bridge Teacher and co-founder of Whirlwind Bridge and Atlanta Junior Bridge. Her success at the bridge table culminated in her victory in the 2000 Baldwin Flight A North American Open Pairs with long-time bridge partner Kevin Collins. Patty and Kevin were married in 2006.

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.

Competition brings many benefits - or so all the politicians say. Bridge players certainly subscribe to the theory. These days somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of all auctions see both sides entering the fray. Having a basic knowledge of how to get into or stay in the bidding is therefore a key attribute for success at the bridge table. You will often hear rules quoted such as 'do not double them into the game' or 'leave the five level to the enemy'. This book covers all the rules likely to help you and, as usual in this series, you will find plenty of examples both for and against each one.

Better Bridge with a Better Memory 'goes beyond ... wide-ranging advice ... and investigates one specific technique in detail. The method demonstrated is mnemonics, and the author shows how that approach, already widely in use in naming agreements and providing clues to their details, can be applied to every phase of the game. As is often the case in Klinger productions, many examples used to demonstrate the case at hand have unrelated interesting points, and the discussions thus provide a welcome variety of topics.' - The Bridge World.

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.

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.

The classic first book on declarer play at bridge, covering the topic with clarity, skill and humor. More than fifty years after its first publication, this book has been revised and updated to bring it into line with modern methods of play and bridge education.

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.

'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.