A guide to the popular card game includes anecdotes about great players, major tournaments, scandals, and strategies that make bridge so legendary.

How much do you really know about finesses? A finesse is one of the most common techniques in bridge and yet one of the most abused. The term “finesseaholic” describes a player who never met a finesse he/she didn’t want to take. So often the finesse is really a last resort, only when other more promising lines of play are not available or have failed. As a common technique, so much is often taken for granted. Often there are questions that need be resolved. Is it a two-way guess? Which suit should be finessed first? Who is it safe to finesse into? Which card should be led may make the difference between success and failure. Are there clues in the bidding or lack of bidding? One definition of “experience” is what we get when we don’t get what we want. After you play bridge for a while, you will learn that the finesses you desperately need to work are the ones that fail. Profit from experience. Avoid an unnecessary finesse that may lead to disaster if it loses.

In this book, we will see a variety of examples of how to unblock your suits and how to block theirs. Mastering these will lessen your frustrations. The plays are easy, it’s the anticipation in sufficient time that is a good deal more tricky. I’m sure you will recognize some of these situations from your own times at the tables where you may have found yourself blocked. There is some overlap; some of the hands could belong in more than one chapter. Learning to unblock, wrote Louis Watson in “Play Of The Hand”, is akin to the fellow who paints himself into a corner, or the chap who sits on the outer edge of a limb while sawing it off from the main trunk.

This history of Portland's bridges includes all the bridges on the Willamette River from the St. Johns to Oregon City, plus three bridges on the Columbia.

What do Martina Navratilova, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet have in common? They're all bridge fanatics! The card came is popular again--at home, online, and in schools. Whether readers are learning bridge from scratch or looking to improve their game, this book is the ultimate contract bridge manual. Bridge master Brent Manley takes you step by step from the rudiments of bidding to the more advanced principles of tournament play. You learn how to: Play a contract and keep score Gain confidence in competitive bidding Recognize good vs. bad leads Successfully communicate with their partners Win tricks more frequently This book provides readers with all the skills and tips they need to play this highly social and totally addicting card game! This edition includes completely new information on: Important bridge terminology Bidding accuracy and judgment Online bridge

Written for complete beginners, this book is based on material that Barbara Seagram uses in her own classes to introduce hundreds of new players to the game every year. The book will take readers to the point where they can enjoy a social game with friends or begin to explore their local bridge club.

When Linda Tafet injured her shoulder and could no longer play golf or tennis, she found a new passion in the game of bridge. She took lessons, and the more she learned the more fascinated she became with the game. Every time she learned something new, she would condense it into her own words on a small index card. Soon, these cards became a stack, and then she combined the stack into a small three-ring binder. When her bridge friends saw what she was up to, they asked her to make them binders as well, and pretty soon she found herself in the handmade book-making business, selling each book for $75 each. After selling more than five hundred of these books, Linda decided she was working too hard and could reach more bridge players if she published her book. The Best Bridge Book is a compilation of her original handmade book, now produced as a paperback. Larry Cohen, a very good friend of Linda's and one of the best bridge teachers in the world, edited her book, ensuring that each lesson is correct and easy to follow. Now all bridge players from beginners to advanced can enjoy and learn from Linda's book.

Give your soon-to-be eighth grader a head start on their upcoming school year with Summer Bridge Activities: Bridging Grades 7-8. With daily, 15-minute exercises kids can review proportions and misplaced modifiers and learn new skills like square roots and writing in the active voice. This workbook series prevents summer learning loss and paves the way to a successful new school year. --And this is no average workbookÑSummer Bridge Activities keeps the fun and the sun in summer break! Designed to prevent a summer learning gap and keep kids mentally and physically active, the hands-on exercises can be done anywhere. These standards-based activities help kids set goals, develop character, practice fitness, and explore the outdoors. With 12 weeks of creative learning, Summer Bridge Activities keeps skills sharp all summer long!

New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

This is the true story of the legendary Vietnam War hero John Ripley, who braved intense enemy fire to destroy a strategic bridge and stall a major North Vietnamese invasion into the South in April 1972. Told by a fellow Marine, the account lays bare Ripley's innermost thoughts as he rigged 500 pounds of explosives by hand-walking the beams beneath the bridge, crimped detonators with his teeth, and raced the burning fuses back to shore, thus saving his comrades from certain death. First published in 1989, the book has broad appeal as a riveting tale of adventure. But John Miller has taken this daring act of heroism beyond the specifics of time and place to provide new insights into the nature of war and warriors, characteristics that have remained unchanged for centuries and will remain valid for generations to come. It has been on the Marine Corps Commandant's recommended reading list since 1990. Newly illustrated by Col. Charles Waterhouse, USMCR (Ret.).