Swing Deals

About the Book

In any Swiss Teams or IMP Pairs tournament, you will soon enough find yourself facing opponents who are frequent or consistent winners. How is it that when you earn your chance to challenge them, more of the IMP swings seem to go their way than yours? That's the focus of this book, which reviews over 100 deals that generated swings in IMPs competitions. It examines how effective bidding methods and logical play or defense led to the outcome at the table. The deals illustrate many useful takehome messages. Here are a few: -when playing for IMPs, the glass is never half empty, always half full -be creative about pre-empting, especially in first and third seat -always be "slam aware" -when the contract looks good, consider what could go wrong and play safely -in defense, think about how to maintain communication with partner The book is in quiz format, with each set of deals followed by a thought-provoking commentary. Reviews "In his second book Rakesh Kumar asks the reader 4 questions per chapter over 26 chapters. I enjoyed the format, writing down my answers for each chapter and then going through the full hand and studying the solution. An interesting and instructive book with an excellent layout" -Paul Lavings, NSWBA Kumar has chosen interesting deals and written in a conversation style that makes the explanations easy to understand. Intermediate and advanced players should find this an entertaining, worthwhile read." -Karen Walker, the Bridge World.