Master Point Press of Toronto is the biggest publisher of bridge books in North America. And at least in terms of number of titles issued on a regular basis, it may well be on its way to being the biggest in the world. There are no American publishers that rival it, although a few British publishers specialize in bridge books.
Master Point Press is now making e-books available for purchase and download at .
It has started out with a selection of new publications as well as some out-of-print titles, with the eventual goal of releasing all new bridge books simultaneously in paperback and e-book editions.
In our modern day and age, more and more people are compiling electronic libraries, so the new approach provides an extra option.
And of course, there are some excellent titles that have been unavailable for a while where the demand really doesn’t merit a new physical printing, but where making downloads available is feasible.
Eventually all of the Master Point Press back catalog is expected to be available in the e-book format. Meanwhile, three brand- new titles are available in both paperback and e-book format.
First is “A Bridge to Inspired Declarer Play,” by Julian Laderman. The bulk of the book is 38 problem hands in declarer play, exploring a variety of themes. There are two very valuable appendices on probabilities at the bridge table. The first is titled “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Probability.” The second is, perhaps aptly, titled, “Much More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Probability.”
Some of this material is pretty technical. You might feel you are back in a college-level math class. But you don’t necessarily have to memorize tables of probabilities or really master the technique for computing various probabilities. Just a better general grasp of the concepts and the lay of the land will enable you to make better judgments at the bridge table.
“Bridge Behind Bars,” by Julian Pottage and Nick Smith, has a new arrival sharpening his bridge skills in prison, with plenty of instructive hands and colorful characters. Naturally, the jacket has the obligatory comment about giving new meaning to the term “cutthroat bridge.”
And finally there is “Somehow We Landed in Six No-Trump,” by top British author David Bird. In the duplicate or tournament bridge world post-mortem, you rarely hear players breathlessly explaining how an aggressive auction propelled them to three spades. You hardly ever hear someone saying, “My partner opened such-and-such, and I bid such-and-such, and the opponents interfered, and all of a sudden, we ended up in four clubs.”
But ahhh, the slam hands. Indeed, sometimes auctions do seem to go into warp-speed and “all of a sudden I’m stuck in six no-trump.” For those who have experienced that scenario all too often, here is an entire book where declarer is always stuck in six no-trump, with of course usually just 11 tricks (and occasionally less) in immediate sight. Naturally, squeeze plays are prominently featured.
Read this book and the next time you regale your bridge friends with another “and somehow we ended up in six no- trump” story, you will be able to close it in proper fashion with “and somehow I actually made it.”
