The most complete guide to the modern methods of standard bidding for bridge, from one of America's leading players, teachers, and authorities. With a logical, easy-to-follow style, William Root covers all the bidding essentials.

The most complete guide to the modern methods of standard bidding for bridge, from one of America's leading players, teachers, and authorities. With a logical, easy-to-follow style, William Root covers all the bidding essentials.

This book incorporates the 2/1 Game Force bidding system whenever the opener bids a major suit. This book is designed to improve your bidding of minor suit openings in 3 steps. The 1st step involves bids to hamper the opponents from finding their 4-4 spade fit. This involves the use of the Casey overcall and the Weak 1NT opening. It also involves the use of the Casey-Jacoby transfer to find a 5-card major in responder’s hand and the use of inverted minors. The 2nd step involves adoption of the strong 2 bid, a bid of 20-21p. This allows the opener to use the Casey Reverse to show a hand of 16-17p by bidding at the 2-level and to show a hand of 18-19p by bidding at the 3-level. The Casey Minor Rebid convention allows the opening to show a 4+ card suit at the 2 or 3-level. The third step involves optimizing your slam bidding with the Casey Trump Queen convention. It also involves the use of the Redwood Kickback convention for minor suit contracts and the use of the Fourth Suit Forcing convention to ascertain whether opener has 5 cards in his 2nd bid minor suit.

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 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.

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. 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).

This book incorporates the 2/1 Game Force bidding system whenever the opener bids a major suit. Five new conventions have been added to the 2/1 system. This book is also designed to improve your bidding of minor suit openings in 4 steps. The 1st step involves the use of the Casey-Jacoby Transfer and the Casey overcall (a 1NT bid shows 4 hearts). The 2nd step involves adoption of the strong 2 bid, a bid of 20-21p. This allows the opener to use the Casey Reverse to show a hand of 16-17p by bidding at the 2-level and to show a hand of 18-19p by bidding at the 3-level. The Casey Minor Suit Rebid convention allows O to show a 4+ card suit at the 2 or 3-level. The 3rd step involves optimizing your slam bidding with the Casey Trump Queen convention and the Casey-Minorwood Kickback convention. The 4th step involves the use of the Weak-1NT (a 1NT bid shows 4 hearts) and Weak-2NT bids, both designed to hamper the opponents.

Overview of the American Bridge Series The American Bridge Series is designed as a sequential set of bidding courses, suitable for self-study or classroom-style study under the guidance of a professional bridge teacher. Volumes I through III include declarer play and defense skills as they relate to the bidding skills taught in each text. Volume IV is reserved for true experts; thus, declarer play and defense lessons would be an insult and are not included. The entire series takes about five years of study and practice to complete. Volume I, The Basic American Bidding System was written for beginners and for social players who need to brush-up on basic bidding skills prior to tackling modern bidding methods. It features 5-card major suit opening bids, strong twos, and some basics of Forcing and Non-Forcing Stayman, Blackwood, Gerber, and few other things designed to form the framework for further study. Volume II, The Intermediate American Bidding System makes the transition to modern methods including weak two openings. It teaches all of the pieces of "Standard" American in a way that integrates all of the varied forms of same. Don't be thrown by the term "intermediate." Many duplicate players think that they have reached that level when they can no longer play in novice games. Not so. "Intermediate," as defined by the authors, can vary from folks with zero ACBL masterpoints to 2500 masterpoints. It's not the points that count, it's the skill level. Volume III, The Advanced American Bidding System presumes a complete understanding and skill with all of the material in Volume II. However, some of the Volume II material is repeated for intended redundancy, since the authors suspect that many folks who shouldn't be attempting to study Volume III will do so anyway. After all, "I'm a Life Master, I must be Advanced." The authors suggest that anyone not comfortable playing in Flight A at an ACBL regional or national tournament, or the World Bridge Federation (WBF) or other governing body equivalent thereof avoid purchase and study of Volume III until they have mastered all that is taught in Volume II. Volume IV, The Expert American Bidding System, (NOT YET RELEASED) presumes two years' experience with the bidding techniques taught in Volume III, and expert declarer play and defense skills. This is not a "Mom and Pop" book. It is for those who wish to successfully compete in such ACBL events as Flight A Grand National Teams, the Blue Ribbon Pairs, the Life Master Pairs, the Spingold, Vanderbilt, and Reisinger teams, etc., and International events like the Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cup, The London Times Pairs, the McCallan, etc. It features 4-card majors, the TEAS responses to no trump openings, weak no trumps, and a variety of other bidding methods which will get bidders to the optimum place but will require expert declarer play or defensive skills to maximize results. All four books emphasize sound, disciplined bidding and an underlying philosophy of "You bid your cards, I'll bid mine, we'll get to the right spot." By the time students complete study and practice of Volume III, they should be able to know what cards partner holds almost to the spot at the conclusion of an auction. In fact, Jerry and one of his partners were once accused of cheating when they got cocky and did this after an auction. The comment was: "How can you know what cards your partner holds?" Jerry's answer: "Isn't that the whole point of the bidding?"