Best Bridge Books for Intermediate Players: From Club to Tournament Level
You’re past the beginner stage. You know your conventions, you don’t butcher basic finesses, and you can defend without giving away every trick. But you’re stuck.
You win at the club against weak players. You lose at the club against strong players. And when you venture to a sectional or regional, you get crushed.
The gap between club player and tournament player is real. These books will help you close it.
What Makes You “Intermediate”?
You should be comfortable with:
- Standard bidding through 2NT opening
- Stayman, Jacoby transfers, Blackwood
- Basic card play and counting
- Common defensive signals
If you’re still struggling with those, go back to the beginner books. These books won’t help yet.
1. The Complete Guide to Competitive Bidding by Mike Lawrence
This is where intermediate players become dangerous.
Lawrence covers when to overcall, when to double, when to pass and defend, when to preempt, and when to push the opponents one level higher. The difference between winning pairs and everyone else is competitive judgment. This book teaches it better than anything else.
Read the chapters on the Law of Total Tricks carefully. Lawrence doesn’t just state the law—he shows you when it applies and when it lies to you. You’ll stop going down in ridiculous contracts chasing phantom fits.
The hand examples are from real tournaments. You’ll recognize the situations immediately.
2. Winning Notrump Leads by David Bird and Taf Anthias
Your opening leads are costing you 2-3 IMPs per session. This book will fix that.
Bird and Anthias cover every common notrump situation: whether to lead partner’s suit, when to lead from broken honors, fourth-best vs. attitude leads, and how to read declarer’s hand from the auction.
The statistics in this book are brutal. Your instincts are wrong more often than you think. Lead the wrong suit in 3NT and declarer makes an impossible contract. Lead the right suit and you beat them two tricks.
Read this before any tournament. You’ll win boards you used to lose.
3. 25 Ways to Compete in the Bidding by Marc Smith and Barbara Seagram
You’ve learned basic competitive bidding. Now learn how to win the competitive auctions.
This book covers responsive doubles, support doubles, maximal doubles, competitive doubles, and all the other treatments you see good players use but don’t quite understand. Each convention has clear rules for when it applies.
The quiz hands are perfect for partnership discussion. Sit down with your regular partner and work through them together. You’ll discover you’ve been mis-using half these conventions.
4. Card Play Technique by Victor Mollo and Nico Gardener
Mollo is one of the great bridge writers. This book covers every card play technique you need: strip-squeeze, throw-in plays, loser-on-loser, trump coups, avoidance plays.
The writing is witty. The examples are instructive. The techniques are practical, not theoretical exercises you’ll never see at the table.
Work through one chapter per week. Each chapter has practice problems. Actually solve them. Don’t just read the answers.
5. Topics on Bridge by Bobby Wolff
This book is a collection of Wolff’s columns, organized by topic: bidding judgment, card play, ethics, partnership agreements.
What makes it special is Wolff’s explanations of why experts make the decisions they make. You see the full thought process, not just the final bid or play.
The section on hand evaluation is worth the entire book. You’ll stop overvaluing queens and jacks in bad suits. You’ll start upgrading hands with good intermediates and fitting honors.
Read this twice. Once through quickly, then again slowly with a deck of cards.
6. Modern Losing Trick Count by Ron Klinger
You’ve heard of losing trick count. You’ve probably mis-used it.
Klinger shows you how to evaluate hands in competitive auctions and game-try situations using LTC, adjusted for hand quality. This isn’t about memorizing formulas. It’s about developing judgment for what your hand is actually worth.
The examples show common situations: partner opens 1♠, RHO overcalls 2♥, you hold three-card support and 10 HCP. Do you bid? This book teaches you how to decide.
Short book. Dense information. Read it slowly.
7. Opening Leads by Mike Lawrence
Lawrence wrote the definitive book on opening leads, covering both suit contracts and notrump.
This isn’t a list of rules. It’s a framework for thinking about leads based on the auction. When the opponents stop in 3NT after showing two suits, what do you lead? When they struggle to game, what does that tell you? When partner passes your takeout double, how does that change your lead?
The quiz sections are brutal. You’ll get half wrong the first time through. That’s good. Each wrong answer teaches you something.
Pair this with Bird’s notrump leads book for complete coverage.
8. Bridge: 25 Steps to Learning 2/1 by Paul Thurston
If you’re still playing Standard American, you’re giving up 10-15% in bidding accuracy. Two-over-one is now standard at tournaments.
Thurston’s book is the clearest introduction to 2/1. It doesn’t assume you’re already half-expert. It walks through the basic structure, then adds complexity one layer at a time.
The comparison charts showing Standard vs. 2/1 sequences are particularly helpful. You’ll see exactly what you gain by switching.
Learn this system with your regular partner, not at the table with a pickup. It requires partnership agreements that you can’t work out mid-round.
9. The Rodwell Files: Secrets of a Bridge Champion by Mark Rodwell
Rodwell is one of the world’s best players. This book collects his tips on bidding, play, and defense.
What’s useful isn’t just the specific advice (though that’s excellent). It’s seeing how an expert thinks about the game. Rodwell doesn’t just tell you what to do. He shows you how to analyze positions yourself.
The sections on counting the hand and making inferences from the auction will transform your game. You’ll stop playing in isolation and start using all the information available.
10. Bridge at the Table by Eric Rodwell and Ron Smith
This book focuses on the practical psychology of bridge: partnership agreements, handling disasters, recovering from mistakes, reading opponents.
The chapter on partnership trust is critical. You’re playing with humans, not robots. How you handle partner’s mistakes affects your results more than perfect technique.
The section on table presence and maintaining focus during long sessions is something no other book covers. Tournament bridge isn’t just about bidding and play. It’s about staying sharp for 6-7 hours.
Reading Order
Don’t read these randomly.
Start with: Books 1, 2, and 3 (competitive bidding and leads). These fix the biggest leaks in intermediate games.
Then: Books 4 and 5 (card play and judgment). Your technical play needs upgrading now that you’re facing better opponents.
Next: Books 6 and 7 (evaluation and opening leads). These sharpen your decision-making.
Finally: Books 8, 9, and 10 (system, expert thinking, practical psychology). These take you to the next level.
Give yourself 6-12 months to work through all of them. Play between books. Test the concepts at the table.
The Practice Gap
Reading these books won’t make you a tournament player. Playing after reading them will.
You need to:
- Play at least twice a week
- Review hands after each session
- Discuss auctions with your partner
- Enter some tournaments, even if you lose
- Find stronger opponents
Bridge books teach you what to do. Experience teaches you when to do it. You need both.
Books to Skip (For Now)
The Bridge World will recommend books by Jeff Rubens, Alan Sontag, and other theorists. Save those for later. They’re excellent, but they focus on high-level theory you don’t need yet.
Some people suggest starting with Hugh Kelsey. His books are brilliant but assume more technical knowledge than most intermediate players have.
Mike Lawrence has dozens of books. You can’t go wrong with any of them, but start with the ones on this list before buying his entire catalog.
What Happens Next?
After you finish these books and play 100+ tournament sessions, you’ll be solid. Not expert, but solid. You’ll win more than you lose at clubs. You’ll place decently at sectionals. You’ll occasionally beat the strong pairs.
Then you’ll realize how much you still don’t know. And that’s when bridge gets really interesting.
But first, work through these 10 books. Take notes. Do the problems. Play the hands. Argue with the authors when you disagree.
Your game will improve faster than you expect. Your partners will notice. Your opponents definitely will.