The Bridge Technique Series

Bridge Technique Series - by David Bird and Marc Smith:

Deceptive Card Play: 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. Chapters are 1. Choosing the correct honour card. 2. Disrupting the defender's signals. 3. Feigning strength and weakness. 4 Creating a losing option.

Defensive Signalling: The authors have presented a comprehensive, logical, effective and concise system for defensive signaling. Their methods should improve the defense for any partnership. It will also add interest to your game. Most valuable is Ace (or Queen) for attitude and King for count.

Eliminations and throw-ins constitute one of the fundamental weapons in declarers armory. This book begins with basic types of the elimination play, and moves on to more complex topics such as loser-on-loser plays and partial eliminations.

Planning in Defence: covers the fundamental strategies available to defenders. Starting with the opening lead and going on through each stage of the entire play of a hand including counting, signalling and discarding.

Planning the play in No Trumps: Covers declarers fundamental strategies in no-trump contracts and the tactics available for developing extra tricks. Topics covered include hold-up plays, deciding which suit to attack, reading the opening lead, keeping the danger hand off play, plus more.

Squeezes Made Simple: Squeexes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are indeed very complex but this book explains the basic concepts so that you too can exectue some simple squeeezes.

Tricks with Finesses: This book does not just teach you how to finesse - ebverybody knows that. It goes a lot deeper, looking for clues when there is a two-way finesse and also looking for ways of avoiding the finesse altogether.

Tricks With trumps: In Part 1 - Declarer Play, you are plunged directly into 'Reversing the dummy', followed by 'The trump coup' and 'Other coups with the trump suit'. In Part 2 - Defense, the authors continue in similar testing vein with 'Defending against trump coups', 'Promoting trump tricks in defense' and 'Forcing Declarer'.

Test Your Bridge Technique Series - by David Bird and Tim Bourke:

Avoidance plays: A useful book with lots of practical examples covering this intermediate-level topic of avoidance plays.

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Deceptive Play: The workbook accompanying Deceptive Card Play from The Bridge Technique Series.

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Defending Suit Contracts: A good text with losts of problems covering defense against a suit contract.

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Defending No Trump Contracts: This book accompanies the Defense books from The Bridge Technique Series.

Elimination Plays: covers only Elimination Plays (where both hands contain at least one trump in the end position). The throw-in, which arises most often is not covered in this book, but in "Planning in Suit Contracts".

Endplays and Coups: This book briefly covers the topic of endplays and coups and then poses a number of practical problems and quizzes covering this important intermediate-level topic.

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Planning in suit contracts: This book covers the fundamental strategies available for declarer in contracts where there is a trump suit. Topics covered include the timing of drawing trumps, when not to draw some or all of the opposing trumps, establishing side suits, plus more.

Reading The Cards: It sometimes seems that experts are able to see through the backs of the cards. Their finesses win more often and they choose the best of alternative lines of play. In "Reading the Cards" David Bird and Marc Smith shows how they draw the correct inferences about the opponents' hands; from the auction and the opponents' play to each trick.

Safety Plays: Safety plays are card play techniques that are used to maximize your chances of making a certain number of tricks, often by giving up a trick that did not necessarily have to be lost. In essence, these plays are used to 'take insurance' against an extremely unlucky lie of the opponents' cards.

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The Simple Squeeze: There are dozens and dozens of types of squeezes and many are very complex. This book gives a brief summary of the simple squeeze and then tests you on it.

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