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 the earlier days of bridge, a direct cue bid of the opponent’s opening bid was traditionally played as a ‘strong cue bid’, a hand too strong for an ordinary take-out double, and forcing to game. A typical hand was any 4-4-4-1 hand with 18 – 19+ HCP. These occurred so seldom and players found they could be handled by starting with a take-out double anyhow that the direct cue bid was finally put to better use. The most popular use is to show some form of a two-suited hand. The Michaels cue bid is one of the most popular conventions among players in the United States. You pick up your hand in second seat and you have a nice hand. You have eleven HCP but nice distribution, 1=5=2=6. And of course, you are going to open your long suit first. But hey, wait a minute. Your RHO is pulling something out of his bidding box. That’s not fair. This isn’t going to be so easy. But we have lots of tools to describe 2-suited hands. The two most popular are the Michaels Cue Bid, and the Unusual Notrump. The parameters for both conventions are the same. One should have at least 5-5 distribution to start. Some partnerships restrict their use of both for hands that are either ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ but not in the ‘middle’ range. This idea however has been losing favor with most expert partnerships who rightly feel shape trumps strength. The more modern feeling is that the distributional nature of their hand outweighs any disadvantage. They prefer entering the auction as soon as possible regardless of strength. That can be worried about later. We will discuss this more in later chapters
How do defender’s win trump tricks? Other than having high honors, natural winners, it’s by getting an early ruff of a short suit. Far more fulfilling and intriguing possibilities arise in poking away at declarer’s trump suit and plucking out an unexpected trick. Trump promotion has been described as the magic of creating trump tricks that didn’t exist at the beginning of the deal. The basis for this is simple. By putting declarer in a position where to win the trick he must ruff high, he promotes one of defender’s cards to a winner. At times this can be surprising and clever. Often when it seems you have no possibility of further defensive tricks, along comes a trump trick seemingly out of thin air. A trump promotion, often referred to as an uppercut, creates a trump trick in a defender’s hand where one doesn’t exist. A couple of actions to note involve giving a ruff/sluff where declarer has no losers to discard. But partner is also void and ruffs high enough to force the next hand, either dummy or declarer, to ruff with a relatively high trump. In this book, Jim takes you thru the various techniques of how defenders achieve trump promotion. There are many example deals followed by quiz deals to help you when you face these problems at the bridge tables.
Bridge is a game of mistakes.The best players make fewer mistakes. It’s not a matter of being brilliant The real expert players never make basic mistakes,they keep the ball in the court, in the fairway. Sure there is an occasional hand where they make a brilliant play but that’s not what distinguishes the true expert from the good player. One often hears an expert say I’ve seen this hand before”. What does he mean? No,he hasn’t seen the hand record;he recognizes the hand type. After all, there are only a finite number of hand types in bridge. For example,second suit hands,cross-ruffs,ruffing in dummy,a simple finesse,an elimination,a dummy reversal and a couple of others. You can’t reinvent bridge every time a hand comes down. If you recognize the type,then you have some idea or plan of how to go about trying to make your contract. But one of the biggest mistakes non-expert players make is playing to trick one, then looking around and deciding what to do next. And in many cases,it’s already too late. The key to the hand was trick one. But sorry,no mulligans in bridge. So this book will present a series of hands,all as quizzes but of course you have a big clue from the title. Nevertheless,I hope you will find the hands and following discussions interesting enough to help you learn to do your thinking before not after you play that first card. Speed kills.
Innumerable books have been written on declarer play. Far less attention has been paid by bridge writers to defense, which is the weakest part of most players’ game. This book presents a series of problems in defensive play, the central theme being active versus passive defense. This problem may start with the opening lead, arise at Trick Two, or be a decision later during the play of the hand. Going ‘active’ when one should have remained ‘passive’ and vice versa is probably the most common defensive error players make, allowing contracts to slip thru. Some of the deals shown are more difficult than others, but they all contain a principle that can be applied in similar situations. After working on these problems and answers, the reader will find his defensive skills are enormously improved.
This book is about only one thing. Shortness, singletons or voids. It’s impossible to overestimate the value distribution plays in bidding accuracy. High cards are nice; anybody can bid games and slams when the high cards are falling out of their hands onto the table. But usually those results don’t get you very far. It’s usually an average or maybe just above. You don’t win bridge tournaments that way. The pairs who bid games and slams on less and who accurately stay out of bad games and slams, those are the winners. When the ‘room’ is in 3NT scoring +460 or +490 and you are in six diamonds scoring +920, then come and tell me about it. I’ve tried to cover the different ways a player can ask or tell about shortness. The book is divided into chapters on offense and defense. There are different ways to do things in bridge. I’ve presented a system I’ve learned from some of the best. You may prefer something else. Whatever works, great. I want to give you some things to think about and suggest solutions. There are lots of ways to do things in bridge. This is one way. I hope you fi nd it helpful at the table. James Marsh Sternberg, MD Palm Beach Gardens, FL
The trump suit adds a dimension that makes bridge so different from other card games. In a suit contract, play is complicated by declarer’s need to keep control. If control is lost, it may be almost impossible to make proper use of one’s strength in the side suits. Before playing to trick one, one should ask what might go wrong? If playing a suit contract, is there a reason not to draw trumps? Or maybe just some of the trumps? Safety plays apply to all suits. Focus is on the trump suit, but the same general principles can be applied elsewhere. The skillful player displays pessimism: Suits will break badly, all fi nesses will lose, that’s the starting point, and things will probably get worse. We will look at a series of hands both from the declarer’s perspective and the defenders’, with focus on the trumps, and see how some of these problems might be managed. With bad trump splits, or playing 4/3 or 5/2 fi ts, it’s easy to lose control. Timing is crucial. On defense, we will look at trump promotion, shortening declarer’s trump holding, the importance of the ace of trumps on defense, when to ruff, when not to ruff, falsecarding, and other weapons available.
Squeezes. Just the word strikes fear into the heart of many bridge players. But simple squeezes are actually quite simple. The single or simple squeeze accounts for 90% of squeezes and 90% of this book deals with simple squeezes. If you wish to become more than just a mediocre bridge player mastering the techniques of basic simple squeeze play is a must. In any session of bridge of twenty or so deals, the opportunity of some form of squeeze invariably arises on three to four deals even if unrecognized. Don’t worry about the other types. They are usually only discovered in post-mortem analysis. The purpose of this book is to guide you thru what you can easily master. You will find that the feeling of executing your first squeeze is a “once in a lifetime thrill” at the table.
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 is a story spanning some of the most turbulent decades in recent world history. James Marsh was born during the first year of the Second World War and many of his infant years were spent in air-raid shelters outside his home. Bombs rained down from the German Luftwaffe as they tried to destroy the city of Southampton, which has now been James' home for more than sixty years. The gritty determination, community spirit and, above all, the humour, with which the local community faced the difficulties of war, have stayed with James throughout his life. Moving on to describe the harsh lessons learned in 1940s and '50s schooling and subsequently describing his teenage years in the merchant navy, this book explores how growing up in the post-war years was both a challenge and a lot of fun.
The 1950s was a time of regeneration and change for Southampton. For children growing up during this decade, life was changing fast. They still made their own toys and earned their own pocket money, but, on new television sets, Andy Pandy (1950) and Bill and Ben (1952) delighted them.With rationing discontinued, confectionary was on the menu again and, for children, Southampton life in the 1950s was sweet. If you saw a Laurel and Hardy performance at The Gaumont Theatre, or made dens out of bombed-out buildings, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this charming and nostalgic account of the era.
In Know It All: Finding the Impossible Country, James Marsh tells of his evolution from a troubled childhood to a career in publishing that culminated in the creation of The Canadian Encyclopedia. Through friendships, curiosity, the insights of a psychiatrist, and the intimate encounters with the authors he met, he championed a diverse and inclusive view of Canada, which was used to draw the great minds of an impossible nation together in a common enterprise.
This is a true story. A young radiologist, fresh out of training, starts working in south Florida but has difficulty establishing himself in a practice. Finally, working alone in west Broward county, he sees the vast empty spaces, west of what is currently considered west. Knowing the future must lie west, the doctor becomes an entrepreneur and starts to push medicine to where now only cows walk. Does he succeed? Read how what starts as cow pastures becomes transformed into a thriving community.
In his philosophical classic Insight, Catholic philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan introduced the concept of self-appropriation – the personal search for knowledge of the self, and through that of the world – as the basis for systematic philosophical investigation. In Lonergan in the World, James L. Marsh argues, clearly and passionately, that self-appropriation can serve as the basis for philosophical, ethical, and even political and economic thought. Comparing and applying Lonergan’s principles to major trends in contemporary philosophy, including phenomenology, hermeneutics, postmodernism, analytic philosophy, and Marxism, Marsh uncovers the philosophical and the socio-political implications of Lonergan’s work and its value as the basis for a search for justice and self-understanding. Drawing on Marsh’s more than forty years of studying and teaching Lonergan’s thought, Lonergan in the World is a book that should be read not just by philosophers and theologians, but by anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of a just and authentic life.
Do you remember collecting shrapnel and listening to Children's Hour? Carrying gas masks or sharing your school with evacuees from the city? The 1940s was a decade of great challenge for everyone who lived through it. The hardships and fear created by a world war were immense. Britain's towns and cities were being bombed on an almost nightly basis, and many children faced the trauma of being parted from their parents and sent away to the country to live with complete strangers. For just over half of this decade the war continued, meaning food and clothing shortages became a way of life. But through it all, and afterwards, the simplicity of kids shone. From collecting bits of shot-down German aircraft to playing in bomb-strewn streets, kids made their own fun. Then there was the joy of the second half of the 1940s, when fathers came home and the magic of 'normal life' returned. This trip down memory lane will take you through the most memorable and evocative experiences of growing up in the 1940s.
Water Covers All Sins James Marsh Banksiadale was an idyllic timber mill town, near Dwellingup and Pinjarra, in the south-west of Western Australia. In its heyday and climaxing in the early 1960s, it was the gem of all mill towns with its own electricity supply, piped fresh water to all houses and a peaceful, well-behaved community, not even needing a resident policeman. Today, it does not exist. Everything changed in 1963 when the mill mysteriously burnt down, all workers had to leave, and the mill houses were swallowed up and covered by the waters of a new dam, the South Dandalup dam. Other problems emerged when it was discovered some 40 years later that two local residents had been murdered and disposed of in a mill house which was submerged along with other buildings when the dam was fl ooded. Three detectives have to work painstakingly on various clues to try to track down the killers in this cold case.
his is a story spanning some of the most turbulent decades in recent world history. James Marsh was born during the first year of the Second World War and many of his infant years were spent in air-raid shelters outside his home. Bombs rained down from the German Luftwaffe as they tried to destroy the city of Southampton, which has now been James' home for more than sixty years. The gritty determination, community spirit and, above all, the humour, with which the local community faced the difficulties of war, have stayed with James throughout his life. Moving on to describe the harsh lessons learned in 1940s and '50s schooling and subsequently describing his teenage years in the merchant navy, this book explores how growing up in the post-war years was both a challenge and a lot of fun.
Presents a North American philosophy of liberation that defends both metaphysics and philosophy of religion, and acts as a critique of neo-imperialism.
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