Since winning the world's most prestigious pairs event in his early twenties, with the equally precocious Michael Rosenberg, Barnet Shenkin has continued to build a an impressive bridge career. Over the last 25 years, he has had the opportunity to play with and against some of the best in the world, and in this book he recounts his favourite hands and stories. While much of his early career was based in Scotland and England, Barnet now lives in Florida and is becoming well-known on the US tournament scene. The book comes to a climax with the US team's record-breaking world title win in January 2000, an event which Barnet covered as a journalist.
The irascible hero of 'Tales Out of School' and 'A Study in Silver' is back! Watch him take on new opponents as the author finds fresh literary targets to lampoon. Once again, Tim Bourke's incomparable deals add brilliant bridge to the humor. This new collection will keep Silver aficionados laughing all the way through.
Even social bridge can be like a roller coaster, where partners rocket up and down together from euphoria to 'you idiot' - while club and tournament bridge are 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. You 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. Roselyn Teukolsky Before her retirement, Roselyn Teukolsky taught math and computer science at Ithaca High School in upstate New York. She is married to her favorite bridge partner, and they have two daughters. Formerly a regular contributor to various bridge magazines, she is working on a novel that has nothing to do with bridge.
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.
This is an unusual problem book in the style of Diosy's There Must Be a Way, in that the reader is shown all four hands and asked whether declarer or defense should prevail with best play. A fascinating challenge for the advancing player.
"The Bridge Technique Series is designed to take the reader through the most important aspects of card-play technique at bridge. Each book of the series focuses on a different topic, and wherever possible the tactics and strategy are considered from the point of view of both declarer and defenders. During the play of the hand, declarer and defenders both have opportunities to use the cards they play to conceal their exact holdings from the opposition. It is possible to disrupt defenders' signaling, to mislead the opponents about strength or weakness in a suit, and even to persuade the defense to give you information."--Back cover
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.
So you tend to be dealt very bad hands. I know exactly you feel! But, facing the facts of life and recognising that it is not your fault, you are going to have to accommodate this failing and improve your defence. It is a hard part of the game; even in international competitions, the standard of defensive play is, to put it kindly, modest. Yes, you will get plenty of reports of brilliances involving spectacular switches, deceptions, unblocks and discards of honours. But for every one of those, there are countless others in which the display would disgrace any beginners' class. I am going to assume that you are a regular club or tournament player who knows the basics of defence but who comes unstuck when it comes to situations where you have to work the hand out in detail. This book will help you to improve dramatically in this area. -- Danny Roth.
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.
