Why You Lose at Bridge

This vintage book contains a detailed guide to playing bridge, with information on common mistakes and how to avoid them, simple instructions for improved play, and a wealth of useful little hints and tips. This book is designed for the ordinary club member with a fair amount of playing under their belt and a knowledge of the more popular systems of play, and it would prove invaluable to those fitting this description who want to improve their game. The chapters of this book include: 'The Points you Lose - Ignoring the Odds', 'The Points you Lose - Playing the Dummy', 'The Points you Lose - in Defense', 'The Points you lose - in Bidding', 'The Points you Lose - in Not Doubling', 'Your Battlefield', 'Don't Teach your Partner', et cetera. We are republishing this volume now complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Review :
The bridge-bidder's arsenal is usually full of gadgets: non-literal bids meant to convey or suggest information that might escape the normal bidding sequence. Even by the time this 1940s book appeared, scientific systems by leading bridge experts were all the rage. Who would disagree with scientific experts? After all, you can't fight progress. WHY YOU LOSE AT BRIDGE dares to differ. S.J. Simon, author of this enduring little volume, shows us the genuine odds behind competitive bidding and play and explains things the highly regarded experts of his day didn't know -- or didn't want us to know. [Note: the following two grafs assume some bridge experience.] Would you almost automatically double a competitor's bid of Six Spades (12 of the 13 card tricks) if you had two quick tricks in your hand? Think about it, Simon warns. If the opponents have even a one-in-three chance of winning, your unthinking double will give them between four and six times the number of points for making contract considering vulnerability. Besides, when they hear your double the declarer will figure you for the two Aces and act accordingly. Watch out for the sure things that really aren't. And sometimes (usually, the author implies) the scientific gadgets aren't worth it. At one tourney, following tortuous symbolic bidding, one partnership came to a contract of four spades and went down one. How had the author and his partner bid that impossible hand? Like this: South - 1 NT; North - 3 NT. Simple and literal. After offering a bracing immersion in what I all unlearning, Simon spends the second half of the book on the psychology of bridge, starting with the times a partner or opponent starts what he calls trancing -- mulling things over. Chapter Eleven, The Logic of Luck, typically illustrates Simon's curmudgeonly attitude. We could almost blame him for the high-British-arch tone of his writing, except that he is always right! WHY YOU LOSE AT BRIDGE is a tremendous book for bridge beginners, perhaps even more so for intermediates and even the more experienced players trying to cope with a new partner. Of course, this WAS the 1940s so the author assumes that major suits (Hearts and Spades) can be bid upon with only four of them in hand as opposed to today's more prevalent five-card major approach. And I have to wonder what Simon would make of today's bidding in general.--Allen Smalling - TOP 500 REVIEWER "This book proves unlearning as important as learning for any bridge player" Written long ago, but by no means out of date, this book describes the major ways that average players achieve less than they could. The first half of the book describes common technical errors and how to learn to avoid them: the second half describes common personality types and how to minimize their destructiveness as your partner. At the end is the reproduction of a rubber in which many common mistakes were made. The book is a wonderful combination of instruction and humour.--A Customer "Still the best bridge book I have ever read."