The Complete Book on Balancing in Contract Bridge

by Mike Lawrence

This revised and expanded edition examines bridge auctions where the opponents bid something and you have the opportunity to either let them have it or to balance. The cost of not balancing can be huge, but you must weigh the cost of passing against the cost of bidding and getting a bad result. Lawrence’s discussion of hand evaluation and planning a balancing auction goes beyond generic rules. Hundreds of examples help you develop judgment

456 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

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Reviews

[Monte Lamb]

This is a comprehensive book, but I had some problems with it. There are two main problems I had. Both can possibly be explained easily, but they were problems for me. One is the book's age where some of the bidding is outdated now. A revised edition can resolve this. The second reason I have the kindle edition and some of the examples are on different pages than the explanations. This was very annoying and had me bouncing back and forth trying to understand things. Having said this, the book covered just about every situation possible. I would have liked more rules that could be then reasoned through while playing, but as the book went on, there did seem to be more of this. With all this, I did get quite a bit out of it and if it weren't for the mechanical things, I would have rated it higher.

[Dave]

Very thorough examination of the topic. It covers a lot of situations, and because it doesn't always tie things down to formulae or principles, it may require either experience or rote memorization. Others of his books were easier to parse.

[Philip William]

Don't bother.

Too many examples and not enough theory about what you are trying to achieve and what will work.

[George Pritchard]

Fair and Balanced before Fox news ever muddied the waters.