Best beginner bridge books available – for a change of pace
A while ago Sylvia Summers asked me to suggest the best bridge books available for beginners. I thought it was an interesting question and I gave it a bit of thought. For now I am just focusing on people who know how to play, have played for a while but are what some people call intermediates. I see the list people put out and they seem to be 25 or 30 years old or more, often the books I read when I was learning… like Claude Watson on the play of the hand. But in some cases those are still pretty good. Here is the list I gave Sylvia
The "25 series" by Barbara Seagram and others has some good book for beginner except for 2/1 and myths. I would recommend
25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know – ABTA book of the year
25 Ways To Take Tricks as Declarer
25 Ways To Be A Better Defender
25 Ways To Complete In The Bidding
Eddie Kantar’s Modern Bridge Defense (ABTA Book of the Year) and Introduction To Declarer’s Play
Standard Bidding With SAYC
Audrey Grants edition for beginners of Bridge Master Software is good
For those who want to learn 2/1 I like Paul Thurston 25 steps to 2/1 but it is not for complete beginners. By the way I attended Paul’s bridge workshops and they are good.
Anyone have any other thoughts on some intermediate books?
Barbara Seagram and I jointly wrote a new beginner book which is coming out in a week or two. It is called Barbara Seagram’s Beginning Bridge. I am not going to talk about it today except to say that my dedication was to my mother Toby Waldman. My mother loves to play bridge and plays with her friends twice a week every week. She loves it when she gets the cards and wins the pot (about $5 I think). I like to think that there are still a lot of players like my mom who love the game.
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With reference to Intermediste level books.
In my opinion the two best books around on bidding are Max Hardy’s two books:
Standard Bridge Bidding for the 21st Century and
Advanced Bridge Bidding for the 21st Century.
The first is for the intermediate 2/1 player and the Advanced one is for Intermediate – Advanced+.
When I was learning 2/1 I did find them a bit confusing but you could be right. It also assumes that they want to learn 2/1.
I play 2/1, standard, forcing club and some variations thereof and I am not at all convinced that 2/1 is either better or the right system for intermediates. I do like to play it with strange partners because standard needs more discussion about some frequent auctions (forcing or nonforcing).
I am going to pose this on the teacher’s forum on masteringbridge.com and we can see what others think.
http://www.masteringbridge.com