Getting to good games, slams, and staying out of poor contracts is an important aspect of bridge. The best way to improve your bidding is not to add a new convention but to improve your hand evaluation skills.

In Mastering Hand Evaluation: Understanding the Principles of Partnership Bidding you will learn about the science of hand evaluation, going far beyond 4-3-2-1 high card points. Enhance your ability to recognize good cards and discover the magic of the 30-point deck. Popular point count and losing trick count methods are examined and tested with a database of over 121,000 hands from championship play as well as practice matches with at least one world champion at the table. Improvements to the best methods are introduced based on the results.

When should you invite on the way to 3NT? When there is a known fit, how many losers does partner have for his 1NT opening? Based on the modified New Losing Trick Count, how many losers do you need to start a slam investigation if partner may have more than minimum values? When you learn the answers to these questions and apply the techniques, your partnership communication skills will improve dramatically.

Hand evaluation is not simply a personal skill. If you and your partner study these techniques together, you will both be on the same wavelength. Your new-found ability to have an intelligent conversation during the auction will lead to better bridge results.

Lawrence Diamond is a Gold Life Master with multiple Bracket 1 and Flight A wins. In 2014, he ranked 265th on the Barry Crane Top 500 list.

Are you a lucky player ? It is no co-incidence that the best players are lucky players. You can become a "better" player by improving your bidding system with your partner and by improving your play technique, however this will not make you a lucky player. How can you become a lucky player and a winner? In this book, illustrated with hands from actual play, the author demonstrates how to become a lucky player. Lucky players evaluate their trick winning potential, recognise and grab opportunities, maximizing their score over all the likely distributions of the cards.

Chess and bridge have been two of the world's most popular games for centuries, and this superb instructional book will tell you everything you need to know about them, from their intriguing histories to how to play and win. Biographies of the most well-known players are included, from famous bridge players such as Terence Reese and Omar Sharif to world-class chess players such as Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.With stepby-step guidance and over 1200 photographs and illustrations, this easy-to-follow book will show players how to play and increase their enjoyment of two of the most tactical and complex games around today.

Most poker books and training videos on tournaments and Sit 'n Gos are by professional poker players who play at the highest stakes. Whereas you can learn a lot from studying them, they won't always be as useful to you when you're mainly playing at the low stakes. Playing low stakes games against beginning and recreational players requires a whole different strategy and approach than playing high stakes games against the best of the best. The Crushing Low Stakes Poker series is focused specifically on low stakes play and teaches you the proper strategy to consistently crush low stakes Sit 'n Gos.

Volume 2: Heads-Up

Volume 2 of the series deals with heads-up play and covers heads-up fundamentals, theory and strategy. We will take a close look at important topics such as hand reading, manipulating ranges and post-flop play on different board textures. We will also cover common playing tendencies of low stakes opponents and how to take advantage of them. Becoming familiar with your opponents' weaknesses and learning how to develop effective counter strategies, will give you the edge you need in low stakes games.

Improve Your Tournament Results

Heads-up skills are essential to achieve good tournament results. There is a significant pay jump in tournaments from second to first prize so mastering heads-up play will make a big difference to your win rate.

Heads-up is not the easiest form of poker. It requires you to play a lot of hands and you will often face difficult post-flop decisions. This book explains heads-up strategy in a practical and easy to follow manner, providing you with the tools you need to master those tough one-on-one poker battles. So whether you play heads-up Sit 'n Gos or multi-player SnGs/tournaments, Crushing Low Stakes Poker Volume 2 will be of value to you.

Includes Push-Fold Charts and Example Hands

Included in the book are push/fold charts for heads-up play. These charts let you make mathematically correct endgame decisions so you can maximize your winnings. Throughout the book you will also find multiple example hands with detailed analysis to illustrate important concepts and strategy.

An amusing, lighthearted examination of the crazy world of rubber and duplicate bridge, and the men and women who populate that strange milieu - with a heavy but hilarious accen on the tricks and ploys employed by dedicated bridge fiends to win games, master points, and/or money.

This book is all about learning to play and enjoy the game of bridge. The bridge book is an introduction to the most popular bridge system played in the United States today. The system is called Two-Over-One (2/1). The book is for serious beginners and includes many of the conventional bids used by players around the world. All phases of the world's greatest card game are included, You will learn to bid accurately, play like a pro, and defend like a champion. Learning to play bridge will provide years of enjoyment in a social atmosphere where fun, competition, and individual challenge are all in play.