What is "Standard" Bidding? This is an increasingly hard question to answer, but the proliferation of bridge on the Internet in pickup partnerships makes it imperative that someone does so. Perhaps the most popular natural system for the hundreds of thousands of online players worldwide is the "Standard American Yellow Card," or SAYC. In this book, for the first time, SAYC is fully described and explained. This will be an invaluable to aid to anyone wanting to learn and understand SAYC, or anyone who simply knows the basics and is eager to fill in the missing pieces in their repertoire.

This e-book present some of the most important bridge bidding systems used used in duplicate bridge tournaments, detailing the most known bridge bidding system, Standard American Yellow Card, by using a logical sequential order for openings, answers, competitive bids and defensive play in order to help the players during the games. Much of the complexity in bridge arises from the difficulty of arriving at a good final contract in the auction. A bidding system in contract bridge is the set of agreements and understandings assigned to calls and sequences of calls used by a partnership, and includes a full description of the meaning of each treatment and convention. Standard American Yellow Card is a specific set of partnership agreements and conventions, using Standard American as a base. Standard American Yellow Card is a very specific collection of agreements, which can, of course, be modified and augmented by partnership agreement. In practical use, the term is often mis-used to refer to Standard American in general, or it could refer to a system that used SAYC as a base and made additional augmentations or changes to the base agreements.

This book is designed to highlight the flaws in Standard American bidding, i.e. the SAYC system. The book discusses the major failures of SAYC, namely the failure of the ACBL to adopt the Bergen point-count system, the failure to simplify reverses, the failure to find a 20-21p bid for all hands, and the failure to adopt the Casey-Jacoby Transfer convention and the Casey Rebid convention. In addition, the book points out numerous minor failures such as the failure to find a means of bidding a direct game, the failure of SAYC to require takeout doubles to have a four-card major, and the failure to adopt Minorwood, a six-keycard kickback convention. The book also points out the ACBL’s failure to clarify certain issues, such as the failure to clarify O’s reply to R’s two-level response, the failure to clarify cuebids, and the failure to clarify Stopper-Ask bids. The book provides a solution for all these problems in a new system called Precision Diamond.

This book is about how to play bridge in a tournament. Unlike club play, the hands are typically prearranged to test your skills. This book gives a comprehensive view of the various types of hands an advanced player might expect to encounter. The various categories of hands presented will teach you when and how to use the end play, when and how to squeeze, how to handle a forcing defense, and how to handle a 41 trump split. The book will also teach you how to play a Notrump hand, such as when to hold up, how to finesse, when to spurn the finesse, when to duck at Notrump, when to avoid the danger hand, how to deceive the opponents, how to unblock, and how to handle transportation.

This book is designed to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the three major bidding systems: Standard American, 2/1, and Precision Club, as well as the Bergen Raise system. Solutions are offered for each disadvantage. Proposals for additional conventions, such as the weak NT and Jacoby transfers, are contained in a simplified model chart of each system. There are also innovative proposals for showing a five-card major, overcalls, and slam bidding. You will also find chapters on various conventions, irregularities in bidding, probabilities, filling out the convention card, playing in a team event, and scoring.

This book contains an innovation that makes it much easier to bid slams. This innovation will enable the bridge community to dramatically increase its bidding of grand slams. This book incorporates the 2/1 Game Force bidding system for major suit opening. This book also expands the Game Force system to partners holding 5 spades and an opening hand. The forcing response when R has 6-12p and a spade response is modified to show if O has 3-card spade support. The traditional 2/1 system is modified by the mechanics of a fast arrival convention to show game-level points. In addition, a simple worthless suit convention using a single bid is employed to show a worthless suit as opposed to the more complicated control system used in traditional 2/1. For minor suit openings, the book presents a simple method for using reverses. The book also shows how to use the Jacoby Transfer mechanism to show R’s 5-card major. The book then shows how R can effectively use inverted minors to hamper the opponents’ bidding. The book next shows how to bid overcalls of a 4-card heart suit to hamper the opponents from finding their spade suit. The book outlines the Kantar slam bids and shows how to locate the trump Queen after a 4NT bid. Finally, the book shows how to improve slam bidding using the Minorwood convention. Ken has published 5 core books on how to play bridge: “Beginning Bridge” (5th ed. 2023), “Tournament Bridge for Intermediate Players (5th ed. 2021), “Advanced Bridge” (4th ed. 2021), “Bridge Defense” (4th ed. 2020) and “Bridge for Notrump Contracts” (4th ed. 2020). Ken served as a Russian interpreter during the Vietnam War and then spent over 30 years practicing as a tax attorney. Ken also has an MBA in accounting and a CPA.

A rollicking roller-coaster of a ride through the world of rubber bridge. From opening bids and responses, through the complexities of Jacoby transfers and the Blackwood convention, and why you should lead the fourth highest card of a suit, this book has it all. In fact, its got it in spades! So who is this book for? Well, everyone. A tall order, maybe, but we think we’ve managed it. If you’re a complete newcomer to the world of bridge, then this book is definitely for you. Want to know what all the fuss is about - but don’t understand why a game takes so long - and don’t know the rules, or how to begin a game, or keep it going? Then this book explains all that stuff, with lots of examples and tips to get you started. Not a novice but still consider yourself a beginner? Want to improve your bidding technique and learn a few playing tricks? Then this book is also for you. It has a host of accessible guidelines that should help sharpen up your bidding, and some neat pointers as to how you can make more of the hands you are dealt. Or perhaps you’ve been playing for a while, and want to improve - you’ve always wondered what "Jacoby transfers" and "cue bids" were all about, and why you should lead with the fourth highest card in a suit: Then there’s something here for you too. You’ll find some useful bidding conventions and playing guidelines, explained through clear examples and (we hope) lucid explanation. Even if you’ve been playing for years, and are well on your way to transitioning from an intermediate to an advanced player, this book might still be for you. It contains anecdotes and caricatures you might find familiar and maybe even amusing, and if you find something that, from your seasoned perspective, you take issue with, well - good! We’d like to hear from you, particularly if you include details we can steal without citing you as a contributor, which can go towards adding to, and hopefully improving, future editions of this book.

This book incorporates the 2/1 Game Force bidding system for opening majors. The Casey Reverse will enable the responder to know the opener’s point count within a 2p range after the opener’s rebid. In addition, the Casey Overcall will improve your part scores by hampering the opponents from finding their spade fit. The book will also help you reach a new level by improving your slam bidding. The advantage of using the Casey 2/1 Bidding System is that you will open a minor suit 12.6% more often than with Standard American. Ken has published more than 15 bridge books. There are 5 core books as follows: Tournament Bridge for Beginning Players (4th ed. 2020), Tournament Bridge for Intermediate Players (5th ed. 2021), Tournament Bridge for Advanced Players (4th ed. 2021), Tournament Bridge for Notrump Contracts (4th ed. 2020) and Tournament Bridge Tips on Defense (4th ed. 2020). In addition, Ken has published two books on bidding, The Casey Simplified Precision Club Bridge Bidding System (2nd ed. 2021) and The Casey 2/1 Bridge Bidding System (5th ed. 2022).

The Precision Diamond system provides a solution to the flaws in the Standard American bidding convention (SAYC). There are 6 notable features of my bidding system. The 1st feature is the ability of the responder to show his 5-card major suit immediately using the Casey-Jacoby Transfer. The 2nd feature is that Precision Diamond permits the opener to show his points within a 2p range from 16-21 points using the Casey Shift and the Strong 2 opening. The 3rd feature is the ability of the overcaller to show his 4-card major suit immediately by assigning 1NT to show 4s. The 4th feature of Precision Diamond is the ability of the Keycard-Asker in a slam contract to ascertain whether the opener has the trump queen using the Casey RKC method. The 5th feature is the ability of the opener to show keycards, including the trump queen, at the 4-level in the case of a minor suit slam attempt using Minorwood. The 6th feature is the ability of the opener to find a slam with a minor suit fit using the Casey Minor Rebid convention.

This book incorporates the 2/1 Game Force bidding system for opening majors and the Casey Simplified Precision Club system for opening minors. This book simplifies the traditional Precision Club system by eliminating many of its unnecessary complications. You will only need to add one new convention, the opening 1 bid, to your Standard American system. This system enables the responder to know the opener’s point count within a 2p range after the opener’s rebid. In addition, the Casey Overcall will improve your part scores by hampering the opponents from finding their spade fit. The book will also help you reach a new level by improving your slam bidding. The advantage of using the Casey Bidding System is that you will open the hand 12.6% more often than with Standard American. Ken has published more than 15 bridge books. There are 5 core books as follows: Tournament Bridge for Beginning Players (4th ed. 2020), Tournament Bridge for Intermediate Players (5th ed. 2021), Tournament Bridge for Advanced Players (4th ed. 2021), Tournament Bridge for Notrump Contracts (4th ed. 2020) and Tournament Bridge Tips on Defense (4th ed. 2020). In addition, Ken has published two books on bidding, The Casey Simplified Precision Club Bridge Bidding System (2nd ed. 2021) and the Casey 2/1 Bridge Bidding System (5th ed. 2022). Ken served as a Russian interpreter during the Vietnam War and then spent over 30 years practicing as a tax attorney. Ken also has an MBA in accounting and a CPA.