Games

From the introduction:

Charles Goren was right. As early as the mid-1950s he was urging bridge players to avoid getting caught up in all the trendy new bidding systems with their myriad confounding conventions. Eventually, even the great Goren was dragged screaming and kicking into the new age of scientific bidding, allowing that things like the Blackwood ace-asking convention and the artificial 2C Stayman bid to check for a 4-4 major suit fit after a 1NT opening bid could be useful at times. But in fighting against complications to our great game of contract bridge, Charles Goren was...

"I will sum up your Knight's Tour routine as follows, IT IS BRILLIANT!" - David Burmeister

In the late 1980s I developed a method for the Knight's Tour which allows a spectator a truly free choice for the starting square and ending square of opposite color (same color start and end is mathematically impossible).

This manuscript describes in detail this method. The method attempts to minimize memorization and teaches you a system to derive a proper complete tour on the spot. The method is so flexible that you can find several different tours for one pair of start and end points. Of course,...

From an old description:

Ajeeb, who recently completed a tour across the United States, meeting all state champions and whose record remains undefeated, is now at the Steel Pier, Atlantic City, meeting all comers at checkers.

Ajeeb's wizardry at chess and checkers is world renowned, and its secret mechanism has baffled mankind since 1769, the year in which it was devised.

During its career, this marvelous automaton has humbled in chess not only the masters of the world, but the greatest soldier of them all - Napoleon Bonaparte.

Ajeeb's mysterious mechanism, its uncanny ability to...

This ebook includes 114 very practical tips on a variety of subjects with practical, easy to digest examples.

13. 1. Getting Off On the Right Foot
23. 2. Hand Evaluation
33. 3. Opener's Decisions
43. 4. Responder's Decisions
53. 5. Notrump Bidding
65. 6. All About Slam
75. 7. Passed Hand Bidding
83. 8. Preempts - We Do It
95. 9. Preempts - They Do It
105. 10. Competitive Auctions
117. 11. I'll Have a Double
129. 12. Impressive Declarer Play
143. 13. The Defense Never Rests
153. Glossary
159. Recommended Reading

Included in this compilation are all 13 issues of the extremely rare John Scarne's Newsletter as well as the ebook Three Card Monte which was not written by Scarne, but he provided all the contents for it.

How to win at Poker, Gin, Pinochle, Blackjack and many other games.

Scarne on Cards is not only a fundamental reference and rule ebook; it is a dependable guide for anyone who wants to avoid being victimized by cheating and sharp practice, and for anyone who wants to play a better game and thereby improve his chances of winning.

"John Scarne is to games what Dr. Einstein is to advanced physics." - John Lardner, in Newsweek

"John Scarne is the most expert exponent of wonderful card effects and table work that I have ever seen in my life." - Nate Leipzig

"John Scarne's one-man expose...

Here is the most complete, most authoritative reference ebook on games available. Just about every game you can think of - in all, more than 1000 games and their variations - is described, together with the latest rules and easy-to-follow instructions. And to add to your enjoyment, here are hundreds of play-to-win tips from John Scarne, the famous authority on games and gambling.

In the more than 600 double-column, oversize pages you will find many old favorites as well as newly invented games including gambling games, variations of solitaire, social games, board games, and parlor games to...

This encyclopedia is the essential, all-inclusive guide to card playing. Here is everything you ever wanted to know about the histories and variations of the world's most popular card games:

• Draw Poker & Stud Poker
• Bridge, Whist & Euchre
• Canasta, Pinochle, Cribbage, Hearts & All-Fours
• Baccarat, Chemin de Fer, Card Craps, Quince, Black Jack, Faro, Monte & Bezique
• Solitaire, Old Maid & Others

Plus you will learn many card games for children and families, odds and probabilities of getting the hands you want. There is also a solid chapter on how to detect cheating, a complete glossary...

Regardless of your system, 1NT is the likely response to an opening bid in a major. You can acquire the judgment needed to make the right rebids, raises and responses.

1. Which hands should respond 1NT, and which hands should not.
2. "6-4 bid more." But should opener rebid the 6, or show the 4?
3. "It's not Impossible." Responder's Impossible 2 Rebid.
4. When responder is a passed hand, what's different?
5. How to cope with an opponent's overcall.

This electronic version has been enhanced with color and bookmarks to allow convenient browsing and reading.

1st edition 2002; 48 pages.

"The hands are 'provocative' in the sense that they will, or at least ought to, provoke the reader to use his or her brains." - Bridge Plus

Problems of the type for which the author is infamous are limited in number, for they demand a combination of qualities not often found together. They should be problems rather than puzzles, instructive rather than baffling, presenting situations that arise in everyday play. They should be short and snappy, and answerable by a concise statement, preferably early in the game; for if delayed too long, variations in defense may lead to complications that...

The Great Bridge Conspiracy ebook chronicles the espionage and card playing exploits of Captain Diggery Piper -- a flamboyant expert first created by Terry Quinn for a serial in Games Magazine. Just as Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and Nabokov's The Defense are structured in accordance with the rules and logic of chess, so Quinn has patterned the action of this swift-paced, suspenseful tale on the psychological intricacies of bridge, craftily building a house of cards that tumbles into a surprise ending.

1st edition 1979; 208 pages.

From Swedish author Eric Jannersten, The Jannersten Collection consists of one CD including both Find the Mistakes and The Only Chance (in both English and Dutch). Card Reading, a third book in the series, comes on a 3.5" diskette and can be added into the original program as a supplement (it cannot be purchased on its own).

Find the Mistakes offers 75 deals where after having been shown what happened at the table, the user gets to play the deal against the computer and discover how it should have been played. The distribution has been subtly changed in a way that would have made South's...

Eric Kokish and Beverly Kraft, two of the world's leading bidding theoreticians, writers, teachers and international coaches, with impressive playing credentials, present a cohesive system with treatments aimed at improving constructive Standard American bidding based on their version of the Two over One system.

Based on mainstream American methods (strong notrumps, five-card majors), Kokish-Kraft cover all areas of uncontested bidding and show you how to apply the agreements and treatments that comprise their version of modern Two over One. They offer solutions to difficult and subtle problems...

Bridge Master 2000 is an educational computer program that is certain to improve your declarer play technique. In this edition, Audrey Grant, North America's foremost bridge teacher, has designed 117 deals specifically for novices -- plus there are 60 more advanced deals.

This edition contains 177 bridge deals intended as an introductory course on play of the hand. Audrey Grant, North America's premier bridge teacher and best-selling bridge author, created 117 of these deals and wrote the text for the bridge movies in this edition. Audrey's 117 deals are all on Skill Level 1. The program...

Bridge Master 2000 is an educational computer program that is certain to improve your declarer play technique.

Bridge Master 2000 is a computer program for PC and PC compatible computers. The Standard Edition of Bridge Master 2000 and Audrey Grant's Better Bridge Edition of Bridge Master 2000 run on Windows 95 or better, have state of the art user interfaces, and come on CD-ROMs.

Bridge Master 2000 is an educational program for improving your declarer play skills. The program presents you with a series of instructional deals to play. You are always declarer. The deals that you play are not randomly dealt. They are carefully...

The Amazing World of John Scarne holds revelations and experiences in gambling, magic, carnival and show business; together with startling disclosures about hypnotism, extra-sensory perception and other mental effects.

The once world's number one expert on gambling tells in this no-punches-pulled, startlingly frank book the whole inside story of gambling, and reveals all the dodges, gimmicks and tricks used by cheaters at dice, cards, roulette and other games of chance. His sensational revelations extend also to magic and escape tricks, to the chicaneries of carnivals and even to the blasting...

This is a completely revised edition of Kantar's 1994 bestseller. The best defensive tips you will ever find are in this ebook.

• Don't compound a crime. If you, or more likely your partner, have made an error, do not lose your cool. Many contracts can still be beaten after one defensive error, seldom after TWO.
• The speed of the play may be a clue to declarer's problem. When playing a 4-3 trump fit, play usually slows to a crawl.
• Do not take your eye off the ball by focusing all of the attention on one suit to the exclusion of the entire hand.
• When declarer leads a side suit from dummmy...

Many books on Bridge have been written but very little on advantage play at Bridge. This is quite curious a fact because for other popular card games, such as Poker, this is not the case. Many books have been written on cheating at Poker. It should be obvious if cheating happens at Poker it will also happen at Bridge or any other game for money or honor.

The best protection is knowledge. And this ebook although written originally in 1933 will give you all the knowledge you need to detect and thus protect yourself from being taken advantage of.

(This ebook should also be interesting for...

This is a new completely revised 3rd edition of Kantar's classic. This ebook is not meant for beginners, nor is it aimed at experts - it is directed at players somewhere between these extremes who would like to improve their game substantially. Bonus tips remind you to count tricks, not points when preempting, and that the player who makes a preemptive bid is not the player who takes the sacrifice. You will also learn such valuable tips as how to be aggressive in the bidding with fitting hands.

You will learn a whooping 540 tips and the card symbols are set in color to make reading even more...

Teeko was the most successful game Scarne invented. There were many Teeko clubs and tournaments in the US and abroad. Even Orson Welles was an avid Teeko player. Despite its initial success and clever game design, Teeko has fallen out of favor and only a small fan community remains and plays Teeko today.

Teeko reminds me on the game 4-in-a-row since winning patterns are four in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally, as well as four pieces in a square. But since pieces can be moved after the initial placement phase, it borrows from checkers and chess. It is also quite similar to the...