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These two books cover this months lessons on Cue bidding and takeout Xs - these two systems will enable you and your partner to respond clearly so that you can be competitive and decisive during the session.

Inferences at Bridge by Marshall Miles.

In this book you will learn where to look for those clues and more importantly how to draw the correct information from them. The tell tale clues are there just waiting to be noticed. Every time a defender plays a card, declarer receives information.

Similarly, everything that declarer does can be turned to advantage by alert defenders. There is even vital information by thinking about what a player does NOT do!

Because responder's transfer bid sounds like responder has a suit other than the suit responder really has, it is necessary to alert the use of a transfer to your opponents.

This is done immediately after responder makes the transfer bid and before the next play in rotation bids. The notrump bidder simply announces, "alert" and plays the Alert card next to partner's bid. Only explain what responder's bid means if your opponent asks.

You may ask your opponents about the meaning of an alert or call at your turn to call as well as before you play to any trick.

This small book looks at how to decide when to open a borderline hand, and how to follow through after opening.

It explains using the Rule of 20 to make opening decisions and how to evaluate hands more accurately.

It also looks at when is a weak 2-bid really a 1-bid and at upgrading and downgrading a hand.

In his Original Judgment at Bridge, Mike Lawrence gave us a lot of great advice on how to think at the Bridge Table.

In Judgment at the Bridge Table 2, Mike continues with his guidance on how to approach the game.

Listen to his counsel and you will become a better player and a more difficult opponent.

After a recent experience of being surprised how a passed in hand was scored, I thought I would share it with you. I naively had the idea that more or less the two pairs would get the same (middling) score but that is not quite how it works.

In normal duplicate, after a board is played there is a score - eg +80 for the pair making 1S and -80 for their opponents. At the end, all the EW scores for that board are ranked and the same separately for the NS scores. You are competing only against the other pairs sitting in the same direction. The highest ranked EW pair gets the most matchpoints (different to masterpoints) on the board, earning two for each EW pair with a lower score and one for a pair with the same score.

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Describing Balanced Opening Hands

12-14         Open 1 of a suit & rebid 1NT (1♣ p 1♥ p 1NT)
15-17         Open 1NT

18-19         Open 1 of a suit & jump to 2NT (1♣ p 1♥ p 2NT)
20-21         Open 2NT
22-24         Open 2♣ (Game Force) and rebid 2NT
25 +           Open 2♣ (Game Force) and rebid 3NT

Defense is the hardest aspect of bridge, in part the defenders have the less information to work with.

That is why it is so important to communicate, and why a solid understanding of basic signalling methods is critical.In this book the author has added a discussion of some signalling methods and practical examples abound - every chapter includes hands from the world's finest players.

This book is aimed at the Intermediate and above player and offers the reader plenty to think about.