---
product_id: 8209384
title: "The Complete Book on Overcalls at Contract Bridge: A Mike Lawrence Bridge Classic"
brand: "mike lawrence aut"
price: "€ 54.17"
currency: EUR
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reviews_count: 12
url: https://www.desertcart.com.cy/products/8209384-the-complete-book-on-overcalls-at-contract-bridge-a-mike
store_origin: CY
region: Cyprus
---

# The Complete Book on Overcalls at Contract Bridge: A Mike Lawrence Bridge Classic

**Brand:** mike lawrence aut
**Price:** € 54.17
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- **What is this?** The Complete Book on Overcalls at Contract Bridge: A Mike Lawrence Bridge Classic by mike lawrence aut
- **How much does it cost?** € 54.17 with free shipping
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## Description

The Complete Book on Overcalls at Contract Bridge: A Mike Lawrence Bridge Classic

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A very good book marred by a couple of flaws
  

*by D***O on Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2010*

When I first read Mike Lawrence's books, including the first edition of this book on overcalls, I found them frustrating. They are short on rules; instead, he teaches by example. But over the years I have come to realize that my earlier frustration was due simply to my relative inexperience at bridge, because the things that Lawrence teaches are matters more of judgment than of rules, and to the extent judgment can be taught, it must necessarily be taught by example, not rule.I therefore recommend nearly all of Lawrence's books, with the caveat that a beginner is likely to get little out of them because of their lack of "rules."That said, I have a couple of serious reservations about this particular book. The first has to do with a probability error that Lawrence makes repeatedly. This first comes up in his discussion of overcalls on 4-card suits, which he recommends in some circumstances. He begins with this example:32AQT7T7654AQYour RHO opens 1D, and Lawrence recommends a 1H overcall, saying "If the possession of five cards in the suit opened bothers you, forget it. Your length in diamonds plus opener's length assures you that there are not a lot of diamonds for your partner and LHO. This means your partner is likely to have heart support. The length in diamonds therefore is not a minus, but rather an asset."Here's Lawrence's next hand:KQJ9A2J3J8743RHO's bid is still 1D. Lawrence still recommends bidding 1S, but he's nervous about it:"This hand may appear similar to the prior hand, but in fact it is quite different. There is a rather subtle difference. The points are the same. The distribution is the same. The hand contains a good four-card suit and a crummy five-card suit. Neither hand contains a singleton. The difference? It is in the auction. In the previous hand the opening bid was in your weak five-card suit. This had the effect of implying that your partner could have substantial distributional support for your four-card suit. Even if you found partner with no high cars at all, you were assured of some kind of fit."In this hand, however, the opening bid was in one of your doubletons. Therefore, even though it's correct to bid 1S you do so in the hope, rather than the expectation, that partner can provide some sort of fit."This is hooey. The analysis is the same with either hand. Here's how you can prove it to yourself. Take a deck of cards and lay out the first example hand in front of you. Now take four diamonds from the remaining cards and put them to your right, representing RHO's opening diamond bid. (You can try this again with five or six diamonds - the exact number doesn't affect the analysis, but for now let's put four over in RHO's hand.) Now look at the cards remaining in the deck - the cards that will be distributed in the 13 "spaces" in partner's hand, the 13 in LHO's hand, and the 9 remaining spaces in opener's hand. The rest of the deck consists of 35 cards, 9 of which are hearts, the suit you're hoping partner has length in.Now, still sticking with the first of these example hands, pick up the diamonds you have given RHO for his opening diamond bid and give him the same number of clubs instead - representing a hypothetical club opening bid by RHO, instead of the diamond bid he makes in the Lawrence example. You'll find that you still have remaining, to be distributed among the "empty spaces" in the hands, 35 cards, 9 of which are the hearts of which you hope partner has a few.In short, it doesn't matter whether you have length in RHO's suit or not. In either case there will be 9 cards of your suit among the 35 unknown cards - no more and no less. And there will therefore be exactly the same expectation (or hope) of length in your suit in partner's hand.Now I don't deny that length in RHO's suit would make me more inclined to make the 4-card overcall. But that's because I would know that (if partner does have support for me) I could ruff in dummy without fear of being overruffed by RHO. But Lawrence isn't talking about that; he's talking only about the "greater likelihood" that partner will have length in your suit if you have length in opener's suit. Nonsense!Lawrence's mathematical fallacy shows up first in his discussion of overcalls on 4-card suits, but it crops up again in his analyses of other overcall situations, and therefore undermines those analyses. This misanalysis appeared in the first edition, and it's surprising to me that no one has pointed it out to Lawrence in the intervening 30 years.So much (whew!) for my first reservation about this book. My second reservation is that, while the second edition of this book does address a lot of approaches and techniques that have arisen since the publication of the first edition, there is nothing at all about transfer advances. Surely that is an area that needs to be covered in any thorough treatment of overcalling today.To summarize: a very good book marred by two serious flaws.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Mike Lawrence on Overcalls
  

*by J***N on Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2019*

Mike Lawrence is one of my three favorite bridge authors, the other three being Larry Cohen, Eddie Kantar and Marty Bergen. These are the guys to read if you want to know what the experts are playing, and if you want to emulate them to the best of your own ability.This particular volume is devoted to overcalls, and is an update to Mike Lawrence's earlier edition writing nearly 20 years ago. As he says, he has incorporated quite a bit of new material and abandoned a few of his earlier views.I like his writing, it is honest and forthright, always reminding you that bridge is both a game of skill AND luck, so that nothing he recommends will work every time and some hands simply defy any prescriptive bid.If you take the time to master the material in this book, your bridge is bound to improve because you will have tools and concepts available that the average club player is unaware of.I subtract one star because Mike does not offer indexes in his books, relying on the table of contents. Quite how one could organise an index isn't very clear, which no doubt is why one isn't offered.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Extensive, but chaotic
  

*by J***L on Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2010*

This classic book was long out of print, but has now been updated. And of course: it is a very good book. It is written in the typical Lawrence-style: not giving simple rules (overcall with 7-17 HCP and a 5card), but giving many example hands. At first this seems confusing, but you will learn that hand evaluation is much more than counting HCP.Although Lawrence is very extensive, he is also pretty chaotic. For instance, the Michaels cuebid can found in a chapter on the overcaller's rebid. And the new updates have not been well integrated in the old text, but simply an extra chapter on modern methods has been added. And he is not complete: the weak jump overcall is not discussed, the takeout double is only somewhat discussed.But is it a bad book? No, certainly not. You can read this book many times, and every time you will learn new things, which you will not have understood the first time. But if you are looking for a book that will introduce you to competetive bidding, you should better buy a book like '25 Ways to compete in the Bidding' by Seagram.

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*Last updated: 2026-02-17*