[LashOut]

Hi, could you please give me some recommendation?

[Huibertus]

Practice in Bridge is massively over rated. Unless you have a coach looking over your shoulder you tend to miss what you are doing right and wrong, you don't really learn.

Really study (that is not just read) good books instead, it'll massively improve your game.

- How to defend a Bridge - William S. Root is strongly recommended.

And even though it only is a small part of defense, certainly study

- Complete Book of Opening Leads - Easley Blackwood I'd say is mandatory.

Others could add good recommendations I guess.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

you need a partner.

There are books out there, from Kelsey and others, ..., it does not work for me,
but it may work for you, Roots book is also good, although for declarer play.


Any way, if you work on declarer play, this will help you with defence as well,
you need to count.

With kind regards
marlowe

[mike777]

COUNT

[LashOut]

Huibertus, on 2025-December-05, 12:13, said:

Practice in Bridge is massively over rated. Unless you have a coach looking over your shoulder you tend to miss what you are doing right and wrong, you don't really learn.

Really study (that is not just read) good books instead, it'll massively improve your game.

- How to defend a Bridge - William S. Root is strongly recommended.

And even though it only is a small part of defense, certainly study

- Complete Book of Opening Leads - Easley Blackwood I'd say is mandatory.

Others could add good recommendations I guess.

Thanks!

[LashOut]

P_Marlowe, on 2025-December-05, 13:01, said:

Hi,

you need a partner.

There are books out there, from Kelsey and others, ..., it does not work for me,
but it may work for you, Roots book is also good, although for declarer play.


Any way, if you work on declarer play, this will help you with defence as well,
you need to count.

With kind regards
marlowe

Thanks!

Meanwhile, I'd like to know the most recommended books for a green hand like me.

If other senior members see this, please reply to this thread.

[P_Marlowe]

LashOut, on 2025-December-05, 20:43, said:

Thanks!

Meanwhile, I'd like to know the most recommended books for a green hand like me.

If other senior members see this, please reply to this thread.

You wanted to say, that I prefer Bill Roots book on declarer play (how to play a bridge hand)
over his book on defence (How to defend), but they are both good, the declarer play book
was cleaner, but defence is messy.

A book rarely mentioned

https://www.amazon.c...ormat=4&depth=1

There is a section / chapter in it "the seven principles of defence", someone said, the chapter alone is worth it,
you find it on the back of the book.

[LashOut]

P_Marlowe, on 2025-December-06, 02:19, said:

You wanted to say, that I prefer Bill Roots book on declarer play (how to play a bridge hand)
over his book on defence (How to defend), but they are both good, the declarer play book
was cleaner, but defence is messy.

A book rarely mentioned

https://www.amazon.c...ormat=4&depth=1

There is a section / chapter in it "the seven principles of defence", someone said, the chapter alone is worth it,
you find it on the back of the book.

Thanks again!

[DavidKok]

I really like "Killing Defense at Bridge" by Hugh Kelsey. It is an intermediate level book on defense that teaches you how to think at the table and arrive at the correct conclusions. However, it is quite challenging.
Additionally, I think "Partnership Defense" by Kit Woolsey is good - again an intermediate level book.
Thirdly I like "Deadly Defence" by Wladyslaw Izdebski, Roman Krzemien and Ron Klinger, but this too is intermediate level.

Most books on defending aren't beginner level, and I do not like the ones that are. Defending is quite difficult, and I think that books that try to dumb this topic down too much fail to teach useful skills. For example, I've read "Complete defense bridge play" by Edwin Kantar (the big red one), and I think it's a waste of time. The examples are fine, but the book is not structured in a way that helps retain any information.

That being said people are all different, and what worked for me might not work for you and vice versa. Personally I really valued getting shown solid foundations and a methodical approach to defending, which helped me appreciate much better what kind of thoughts should be going through my head during the play.

[LashOut]

DavidKok, on 2025-December-06, 08:48, said:

I really like "Killing Defense at Bridge" by Hugh Kelsey. It is an intermediate level book on defense that teaches you how to think at the table and arrive at the correct conclusions. However, it is quite challenging.
Additionally, I think "Partnership Defense" by Kit Woolsey is good - again an intermediate level book.
Thirdly I like "Deadly Defence" by Wladyslaw Izdebski, Roman Krzemien and Ron Klinger, but this too is intermediate level.

Most books on defending aren't beginner level, and I do not like the ones that are. Defending is quite difficult, and I think that books that try to dumb this topic down too much fail to teach useful skills. For example, I've read "Complete defense bridge play" by Edwin Kantar (the big red one), and I think it's a waste of time. The examples are fine, but the book is not structured in a way that helps retain any information.

That being said people are all different, and what worked for me might not work for you and vice versa. Personally I really valued getting shown solid foundations and a methodical approach to defending, which helped me appreciate much better what kind of thoughts should be going through my head during the play.

I share the same observation with you that beginner friendly books talk little on defence.

But how do people level up on defence from a green hand?

When it's on me to open, there's so little in my mind for me to form a strategy.

[thepossum]

Huibertus, on 2025-December-05, 12:13, said:

Practice in Bridge is massively over rated. Unless you have a coach looking over your shoulder you tend to miss what you are doing right and wrong, you don't really learn.

I am afraid I completely disagree about practice in Bridge and anythinng for that matter
The way to learn anything is through practice - ideally practice in a real situation too

I think people like to make things sound very complicated, write endless books, expect endless lessons and coaching and advice.
There are a few very basic principles in Bridge, even more basic in defence
But the two of you not seeing partner's cards adds a small extra dimension
And you generally have less time in defence

I will let the experts explain them, rather than me

Regarding books I have an old Kelsey and something else
Winning Card Play by Kelsey includes some stuff on defence as you would hope - almost half the book
as does the Mistakes you Make at Bridge by Reese and Trezel -I think Mistakes are more declarer focussed

[DavidKok]

LashOut, on 2025-December-06, 20:42, said:

I share the same observation with you that beginner friendly books talk little on defence.

But how do people level up on defence from a green hand?

When it's on me to open, there's so little in my mind for me to form a strategy.

Good questions! Let me address them individually:

Regarding learning defence, I would actually recommend Hugh Kelsey's book even to beginners. It's overwhelming. It won't help at first. It will also be far too much. However, I think taking it one step at a time - by which I mean, a chapter every month or so, taking it slowly and trying to incorporate that into actual play - is much more helpful than most alternatives. Several years ago when I was interested in gaining more defensive insight I was told a lot of 'just-so' stories about brilliant inferences and crucial signals and clever signalling methods. I found myself in a situation where I had a hundred truisms at my disposal, but no idea how to tell which applied when. It resulted in me scoring a lot of 0%'s or -12 IMPs, trying to be brilliant (my partner called this 'everybody goes through a phase where they are not trying to win, they are trying to get in the papers').
With the benefit of hindsight I can confidently say that a book outlining a structural way to think through defence, which is what Kelsey does, would have helped me much more than all the advice I got. Even though the book would have been too difficult for me, having it available as a reference or to tackle slowly would have helped me a great deal. That being said though, I'll repeat that learning styles are very individual.

One other source I did not mention (deliberately) but which might suit your needs is Krzysztof Martens' 'The Working Horse'. In my notes I have this book listed as Advanced level, even beyond Intermediate. However, it very clearly explains the inferences drawn and the way to think as a defender. The only problem is... well, the problems are too difficult for beginners, and the answers are on the next page. If you want to read this book slowly, at your own pace, you do need great resolve to not flip ahead to the answer as long as you're still not fully sure.


You also mentioned opening - are you referring to opening leads? I consider this a distinct topic from defensive advice, though of course they are related. Personally I've read about a half dozen books on opening leads. There is some great advice out there, but as a very very coarse overview:

• Opening leads involve risk, even experts throw tricks (and contracts) on the opening lead some of the time. This is inevitable.
  
• There are lot of superstitions and outdated truisms that are taken for truth. I find it very difficult to decide what to believe and what to disregard, especially since multiple sources contradict one another.
  
• Very few authors actually present an overview of winning and losing cases for certain actions, or study relative merits of different choices. Unlike the rest of defence, opening lead advice is very much based on arguments from authority or gut feeling. Still, there's room to learn and improve compared to baseline or random guessing, but it requires much more effort by the reader.

[AL78]

thepossum, on 2025-December-06, 21:26, said:

I am afraid I completely disagree about practice in Bridge and anythinng for that matter
The way to learn anything is through practice - ideally practice in a real situation too

Up to a point I agree, but it has to be practice with some work added, not just throwing cards around at the table. I used to assist at the beginners/improvers evening and gave occasional workshops on a specific theme aimed at their level. They claimed to understand what I was teaching them, but when it came to playing some hands specifically designed to apply what had been taught, they could not apply what they claimed to have learnt. They are even less likely to apply a principle when playing in a standard duplicate session with randomly dealt hands when they have no idea when or whether it is going to come up on any hands. This is why the majority of the improvers at the club stayed improvers forever.

You need to learn a principle first, either from a book or a teacher, but you need to learn it well enough to be able to recognise when it comes up at the table. Without the second, the first is useless, and if you cannot do the second, no amount of playing hands is going to help. Ideally what you need is a mentor who will teach one fundamental principle, then go through hands after a session, identify where that principle came up, and discuss or even replay those hands with you. It is helpful if you keep reading about the principle in books over and over again so it gets imprinted into the long term memory and pattern recognition. As an example, for me personally, playing through the BridgeMaster hands has helped me recognise the potential for elimination and endplay tactics, since these come up a lot in the intermediate and advanced hands.

[alibodin]

Thank you for this thread very helpful. I dusted off Hugh Kelsey's book and had a book mark at end of chapter 1, must read it again and focus on a chapter for a while. Will also look at Root's book.

[akwoo]

Here are my suggestions:

1) Have agreements on your leads and signals with your partner, enough to cover every situation where you can read the signal - which ideally means a meaning for every card played on every hand.

2) Hopefully there are hand records available for the hands you have played. Look at the hand records for hands you have defended, figure out what you could have done to make more tricks, and figure out how you could have known (or helped partner to have known) to do that.

3) Most of defense is counting more and keeping track of more information. (This is useful for declarer play too, but you can usually get further with declarer play without this skill.) When you get to the point of having enough brain space to keep track of this information (I don't have a good sense of how much of a beginner you are), you can start with the following: every time declarer has opened 1N, as soon as dummy comes down, add dummy's points, declarer's range, and your points, subtract from 40, and calculate your partner's range. Keep track of this information with every honor partner plays. When you have a decision about what high cards to play partner for, use this information to decide if your choice is possible.

4) Once chess computers got good enough, a lot of chess opening lines went out the window. Grandmasters discovered that lines following established opening principles were actually wrong because of specific tactical surprises. Tactically, bridge is fairly simple - it really is possible to analyze all the possible lines of play and how they will work out. So it really is possible - and frequently necessary - to forget about principles, figure out what the possibilities are for where the missing cards are, and calculate the play that will work for the most (or most likely) possibilities. Calculate, calculate, and calculate. Play slower if you have to.

5) A few weeks ago, I was dummy in a heart contract, with A87532 (or something like that) in hearts. Declarer led a ♥4 to the ♥A, my RHO showing out of hearts. The declarer then led a small heart from dummy. LHO, who started with ♥KJT96, played small. If you don't know after a few weeks of play (if not the first day) to go up with the K, I don't know how to help you get better at defense.

[thepossum]

alibodin, on 2025-December-07, 10:54, said:

Thank you for this thread very helpful. I dusted off Hugh Kelsey's book and had a book mark at end of chapter 1, must read it again and focus on a chapter for a while. Will also look at Root's book.

The thing I liked about Kelsey from memory is the way he combined declarer play then defence against it

[mike777]

What makes me chuckle when discussing Kelsey's famous book is it had in bold letters "Intermediate"

Apparently in the 60s, English intermediate players, were what we call today World Class. This book is very advanced.

[thepossum]

mike777, on 2025-December-07, 18:58, said:

What makes me chuckle when discussing Kelsey's famous book is it had in bold letters "Intermediate"

Apparently in the 60s, English intermediate players, were what we call today World Class. This book is very advanced.

No harm learning advanced stuff early on. I learned a lot from Zia's columns
But laying out declarer then defence in such an eminently sensible way is very accessible

PS I am loathe to comment on the broader aspect of what is regarded as advanced these days

[thepossum]

I hate undermining the experts here whoch I doubt I ever could but I always found learning most things was taught in the wrong way for me
I like practical step by step strategy and tactics

So here for expert comment is Chat GPT's contribution - a 1 pager of priorities in defence - who knows where it learned them from - to me that kind of 1 pager is easy to digest

Bridge Defence – Priorities (1‑Page Guide)
1️⃣ Take Your Sure Tricks
- Cash winners before declarer discards them or ruffs.
- Count how many defensive tricks are certain.
- If a suit is ready to run, take those tricks now unless you have a clear reason not to.
2️⃣ Stop Declarer Establishing New Tricks
- Break communications between declarer and dummy.
- Attack entries rather than the long suit directly.
- Lead through strength to force declarer to guess.
- If establishing tricks is slow for declarer, be active. If fast, switch to passive defence.
3️⃣ Give Partner Useful Information
- Attitude: High = continue, Low = stop.
- Count: High–low = even number of cards.
- Suit preference: High = higher side suit, Low = lower.
- Consistency matters more than system complexity.
4️⃣ Make Declarer Guess
- Avoid automatically covering honours.
- Don’t unblock cards that reveal distribution.
- Sometimes the best card is a quiet one that forces declarer to decide.
5️⃣ Build a Model of the Hand
- Use the bidding to place points and shape.
- Count declarer’s distribution as the hand unfolds.
- Ask: How many tricks does declarer need? Where will they come from?
- Constantly revise your picture of the deal.

Quick Summary
Take your tricks Protect winners, avoid giving ruffs or discards.
Prevent declarer's plan Block communications and entries.
Communicate with partner Attitude, count, suit preference.
Make declarer guess Don’t solve their problems for free.
Model the hand Shape + points + trick sources.


Then without wanting to go on too long about it. Once you know declarer's priorities and defensive ones you go ahead and think about it and do it - practice

[LashOut]

mike777, on 2025-December-07, 18:58, said:

What makes me chuckle when discussing Kelsey's famous book is it had in bold letters "Intermediate"

Apparently in the 60s, English intermediate players, were what we call today World Class. This book is very advanced.

It's fun to know this. I will try after carefully studying my first book.