Countdown to Winning Bridge

by Tim Bourke, Marc Smith

Did you ever notice how the bridge experts always seem to know where every card is? How their finesses always seem to succeed? How their guesses are nearly always perfect? This book won't teach you to play quite that well, but it will introduce you to some very simple techniques that the experts use on play and defense. As declarer or defender, counting the hand is the one thing that will help you the most. But how do you keep track of all those cards? This book will show you how - explaining the tricks of the trade, and helping anyone who can count to thirteen to become a much better player. Full of practical examples of how to apply the information you get from counting, this book is sure to improve your game.

218 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

Reviews

[Conrad Timon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good

[Michael Kawalec · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Countdown to Winning Bridge" is a sound book for learning card counting techniques, but there is one fly in the ointment. In Chapter 6, the authors deviate from their card counting efforts into a disastrous attempt at probability theory. They conjure up something they call "The Monty Hall Trap" an idea based on an error in reasoning (they connect two independent events in their explaination), which in turn is used to justify an unhelpful idea they call "Biased Information". I recommend skipping their Chapter 6 and instead referring to "Bridge Odds for Practical Players" by Kelsey & Glauert for an excellent treatment of bridge probability theory.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book that covers the subject on how to determine the opponents cards in Bridge. It starts off with some relatively easy examples and then progresses to more involved ways to do it. I will say that the subject is a difficult one and by the end of the book, it is very difficult to grasp the information, at least for me. However, it gives a great way to approach playing the cards to maximize your results.