All titles available from Master Point Press

Match your bidding skill against the world's top pairs! So you think you can bid like an expert? Here's your chance to prove it! Try bidding the hands in this book with your favorite partner, and then compare your results with those from the prestigious international pairs tournaments where they were first played. Scoring is IMP Pairs, and is based on the actual datums recorded in each tournament. Afterwards (or instead if you prefer) you get to read Larry Cohen's wry comments on how each of the hands should be bid, and where he and the other experts went wrong (which they frequently did!).

• Advanced

Triumph & Tragedy Agony & Ecstasy Over 100 years of bridge history, it is not surprising that one can find many matches and events that came down to the last board, or even the last card, played. And of course, there is an added poignancy in these situations that derives from the fact that bridge is a unique sport in one aspect — the players do not know the score. In this book, the author has collected dozens of fascinating deals, each of which is that last board — the one that decided a world title or represented an individual triumph or tragedy.

• Intermediate

Just about every bridge player over forty has read Victor Mollo’s Bridge in the Menagerie, a book that is on any list of the all-time top ten on the game. Towards the end of his life, Mollo continued to write stories about the same well-loved characters (the Hideous Hog, the Rueful Rabbit, Oscar the Owl, and the rest), but they appeared in various magazines around the world, and if you weren’t a subscriber, you didn’t get to read them. This is the final MPP anthology of these lost Menagerie gems, collected for the first time in book form (following The Hog Takes to Precision, Diamonds are the Hog’s Best Friend and Swings and Arrows).  Victor Mollo is everyone’s favorite bridge humorist, and a genuinely new book from him will be greeted as something to be treasured.  Illustrations by bridge cartoonist Bill Buttle add to the fun.

Perhaps more points are won and lost on the opening lead than at any other time in a bridge hand. With only the bidding and his own thirteen cards as guidance, the opening leader must make a decision that has the potential, at one stroke, to determine the outcome of the play for better or worse. In this book, a top player and writer takes the reader through the questions that need to be asked before selecting an opening lead: whether to be active or passive, whether to lead partner's suit or your own, whether to lead trumps or not, whether to try a deceptive lead, and so on. These and many other issues are covered in an approachable book aimed at the player who wants to improve a key aspect of his game.

• Intermediate

The “over-my-shoulder” method of bridge writing became prominent in the writing of Terence Reese and continued in the work of excellent writers such as Mike Lawrence and Larry Cohen. In this genre, the reader gains access to the mind and thought processes of an expert. The reader encounters techniques, such as counting and drawing inferences, that are supposedly expert territory. Stewart’s writing — which comprises books, hundreds of magazine articles and, to date, about 11,000 newspaper columns — focuses on logical thinking. During a session of bridge, a player faces hundreds of decisions. Some can be resolved instinctively, but many require reasoning. That is what makes the game so exhilarating: having a problem and figuring out the answer. In this book you sit with the author and can compare your decisions with his. You won’t agree with all his actions — bridge involves personal style and judgment — but you will find it instructive to listen in on his thoughts

• Intermediate