“Recently, I played Roman Club 1959 with a partner and got rimmed by him because I used a modification that appeared in the 1961 version.”
Oct 092003
The Bidding
I was going to devote this page to a list of recommended bridge books, but in truth there is only one I can recommend: Bridge Is a Conversation by Gerard Cohen. Though self-published — no prophet is recognized in his own time — this bids fair to become a classic. Gerard’s writing, like his bidding, dummy play, post mortems and defense, is consistently entertaining and even instructive, in a weird way. All items guaranteed sic.
Oct 092003
“The players in 3rd and 4th seats are always the responders, regardless of what you may have heard through the grapevine, even if the players in 1st and 2nd seat have passed.”
Oct 092003
“If the auctions continue passed that point, the crew becomes the captain and the process restarts with reversed roles.”
Oct 092003
“I personally do not care for invitational raises altogether, because they force the partner to make a decision without really knowing with certainty the contents of the captain’s hand.”
Oct 092003
“The NT bid used as an acceptance to an invitation by the captain, is a negative answer and does not necessarily reflects the possession of a balanced hand nor a stopper in all the unbid suits named by the team.”
Oct 092003
“A game force bid is not necessary to reach game. It can be replaced by a cascade of 1 round forcing bid, at the expense of purity of the auction.”
Oct 092003
“Some players seem to think that making a negative double with a 5 card major is right. It is not, regardless of the cards held in that suit.”
Oct 092003
“Now that you have acquired the panoply of the perfect bridge player, let’s review it in a more global way, the strategies you may use to reach your contracts, or force the opponents to miss theirs.”
Oct 092003
“In some very sophisticated systems, point counts is all that matters at that point, because the distribution factor is dealt with a very precise and specific way after the opening statement is made, but for other systems, like SAYC or 2/1GF, there is some flexibility concerning the estimation of the points value of the hand when making the opening statement.”