Bidding in the 21st Century: The Club Series

by Audrey Grant, Betty Starzec

This is the 1st in the American Contract Bridge League's series of bridge books for beginning and advancing players. Successfully used by students and teachers for over 20 years, this edition has been updated to reflect current standards for playing bridge. This book concentrates on bidding.

Genres: Games

463 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 25, 2007

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like bridge. The game is quite challenging and a nice way to spend time with friends and family.

Bidding is a terribly difficult chore, however. I find myself regularly confused as to the power of my hand and how to properly respond to my partner's bids.
This book provides one method by which you and your partner (as well as your opponents) can best determine the place to be.

I found myself amazed at how simple a language bidding is. One only has 38 phrases at their disposal, so how can you have a meaningful conversation?
Bidding conventions provide the meanings to your phrases. If you and your partner work together you can (almost) always find the best place to be and make your contract.
Does this reduce bridge to triviality? Absolutely not, there is still a rather large amount of luck and skill involved in the play of the hand.

But...I may actually become a rather decent bidder, and that is half the battle.

[Nancy Burkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As these were written as an instructional series, I will review them together. As a beginner bridge learners, my husband and I started with these three. They are well written, easily followed and quite instructive. I especially enjoyed the first two, but got bogged down by the third and couldn't finish it (a rare thing for me). I wonder if it would be better read after much more practice and playing of the game to pull the quite detailed explanations together. I would have also liked it if each had a well-organized index in the back to allow one to find concepts more easily in these reference books. The back appendix is a definition of terms, but there is no organization of the concepts and we found ourselves having to work hard to locate for review parts that were relevant with our play. Nonetheless, the authors are clearly good instructors and I'd recommend these to new players.

[Randy Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started with a couple other beginner books, but this book was the one that helped me finally connect some logic and emerge from being an unstructured and erratic beginner to having some appreciation of the depth of the game and vague hope as a partner. The exercises at the end of each chapter are very helpful and shouldn't be skipped. Also I really liked the sporadic card play tips. Definitely one to keep on the shelf and visit again soon after practicing more.

[Betty]

Awesome clear workbook, intended as a textbook for ACBL bridge classes but perfectly understandable by yourself. Best bridge book I've seen.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent lessons on bidding

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the past two years I have been taking bridge classes and learning how to play bridge. This book is an excellent practical textbook on the basics of bridge and how to bid. It is the first book in the American Contract Bridge League ( ACBL) series. I believe that ACBL is the primary bridge organization in the United States.

My current Arizona bridge teacher Shawn Warren used this book as a textbook for her eight week class on Bidding.The book provides explanations, step by step examples, guiding principles, exercises with answers on the next page, and chapter summaries. Even if you have no bridge teacher to provide lectures and practice, this book provides an excellent tool for teaching yourself bridge.

I xeroxed the summary pages from each chapter and stapled them together with my own table of contents. I use this as a reference during bridge class and when practicing with classmates.

My copy of this book was copyrighted in 1990. It harmonizes with the fairly aggressive bidding rules I see used when I play bridge online at Bridgebase Online (BBO.com). For example, the book suggests bidding one No Trump (1 NT) when your balanced hand contains 15-17 High Card points. The book suggests bidding game with 25 points.

In 2019 I took a bidding class from a different Arizona bridge expert Dennis Higdem (?). Dennis preferred the bidding rules in the original version of the ACBL book, Bidding by Audrey Grant. Dennis said the original Audrey Grant book had more conservative bidding rules that were more appropriate for beginners. For instance, the original book suggested bidding game with 26 points and 1 NT with 16-18 (or 19?) High Card Points. Dennis thought that ACBL rewrote the book and developed the 21 Century Series to make it easier for highly experienced bridge players to beat the beginners. (Dennis pointed out that if a beginner bids very aggressively, the beginner might not be able to take the promised number of tricks. The beginner would show a losing score if registered on the ACBL website. An experienced opponent would gain a higher score on the ACBL website if the opponent beginner went down.)

Unfortunately the original Audrey Grant bidding book is out of print and hard to acquire, so it is not appropriate as a bridge textbook for a class. Nowadays bridge students can easily buy Bidding in the 21 Century, so that is what’s available if you want to learn. I have read the entire 21 Century version, but not all of the original version. I suspect that the changes in the updated edition are not all that radical, and I highly recommend it. The 21 Century book teaches bridge the modern way. My present teacher Shawn Warren thinks the original Audrey Grant book is old-fashioned.

This spiral bound trade paperback is 369 pages long. Despite the good table of contents, sometimes it is hard to find an answer quickly. Several of my bridge classmates have purchased a 35 page laminated pamphlet called Audrey Grant Bridge at a Glance Expanded Version. It was published by Baron Barclay Bridge Supplies. I have not yet familiarized myself with it, but it looks promising as a summary of Bidding in the 21 Century.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to read and put it to work. I am playing with so much more confidence now. It has made it even more fun to play bridge.

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good introduction to bidding, lots of exercises. This is modern bridge, counting for length not distribution for opening, 5 card majors. Now if I could just find people who play!

[Earl Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent way to begin learning to play bridge.