real_goose

Anyone have some tips for good bridge books written in the "over my shoulder" perspective" recently? Say during the last 20 years or so. I've recently read "Play Bridge with Me" by Frank Stewart, which was very good. Obviously there are a lot of older books in this genre that are still great, but I don't have a good overview of more recent examples.

Thanks for this respnose. I would love to read those articles, but I guess the only way to do that is buying the individual issues, which seems a bit expensive. I will check out the book though!

Are there any bridge books that deals solely, or in a large part, with how to play contracts with a seven card trump suit?

It is well known that kings and aces are worth more, and queens and jacks worth less, than the standard 4-3-2-1 point system suggests. I read about a simple formula to adjust for this (can't remember where). It said to add up all your aces and kings, and then all your queens and jacks. If the difference between these two groups is more than two, you either add or subtract one hcp. For example, if you have a hand with four aces and one queen, it is worth 19 hcp, not 18. While a hand with four jacks and nothing else is worth 3 hcp, not four. Does anyone know if this is a common or sensible rule to use as a guideline? Obviously it won't give you a complete picture of the value of your hcp, as supported honors are worth more than unsupported, singleton honors are worth less etc.