How improve play of hand?

[ggwhiz]

https://www.amazon.com/Watsons-Classic-Book-Play-Bridge/dp/0064632091

 

Watson's Play of the Hand in Bridge is the most complete book on declarer play I've ever seen.

 

Also a STRONG recommendation here but it's very advanced and imp oriented instead of matchpoints.

 

An early mentor of mine played a lot of matchpoints during the year and re-read Watson EVERY year before our team trials.

[Stephen Tu]

Watson isn't for everybody. To me the writing style is very dry, hard to get through. I think other authors cover the same ground, 98+% at least and all the real essential stuff, and are much easier to read, so I don't recommend Watson to beginners. If they want to read it sometime down the line, it won't hurt, getting concepts reinforced never does, but I don't really think there is stuff that is only found there that is essential. The techniques are all pretty much covered in like Root's book, and then to me it is merely a matter of practice, learning to plan and card read, and practice can be had in the many quiz books by Kantar/Kelsey and the like, or Bridgemaster software, also Reese is good for "over-the-shoulder" type book where you see how a good player thinks about the hand card by card as the play develops.

[SteveMoe]

Lot's of very good suggestions on this thread already!

Would add:

Kantar's Take All Your Chances

Bridge Master 2000 software

 

Then practice counting winners, losers (fast & slow), entries, and trumps.

Count stoppers in their suits (affects how many times you can safely lose the lead).

Focus on making your contract - overtricks can wait for now...

Find the least risky choice to develop the tricks you need.

Combine Chances (see Kantar and "Stayin' Alive").Identify when you need more information and play accordingly.

Make a plan A.

Make a Plan B.

Keep track of all information from the bidding (bids and their absence).

Keep track of cards (each trick). Use "show outs" to guide your estimate of opponent's shape.

Then remember to go with the odds. Even a tiny chance is better than no chance at all.

 

With repetition this will all become second nature.

[Lovera]

It's probably a little advanced for you at the moment but Play These Hands With Me by Terence Reece is possibly the best bridge book ever (it is also sold as part one of Practical Bidding and Practical Play). It follows the thinking of an expert player as he plays through various hands. It does assume a good basic knowledge of standard techniques, but you should still learn a lot from reading it.

 

Of course there are plenty of basic books around. Anything by Bird, Mollo, Reece and several others is worth reading. Check out the Chess and Bridge website.

 

http://shop.chess.co.uk/bridge-ebooks-s/1965.htm

The book of T. Reese could be available for free to read as "anteprime" in Google other. I want to say that the " French school " is a well suggest for you : "Total bridge" by Bertrand Romanet explain about planning and, subsquently when improved, you can read from this author another good book wrote about squeeze "Le squeeze au bridge".