MSO World: Bridge Articles

The leading American magazine, The Bridge World describes this book as "The best and most complete book devoted to the defenders' use of misinformation." Praise indeed, but is it the book for you?

It is easy to be put off by the thought that you already perform countless unintentional deceptions and have too much trouble defending competently to worry about fooling your opponents further. However, good deceptions are fun. What's more, they can be learnt by players of most standards.

The clear step-by-step presentation in this book takes the reader through each subject in easy stages, so don't be put off! All areas of deception are covered. The hand below, one of the best of all time, is from the section on discarding. It was defended by Maurice Harrison-Gray, one of Britain's top players in the post-war years.

A Q 10

K J 9 8 5 2

9 8 2

8 3

	N
W		E
	S

K Q J 7 6 4 2

9 6 4 3

8 7 5 2

A Q 3

K J 5 4

A 10 5

K J

10 6 4

A Q 10 7 3

West	North	East	South
	1	3	3NT
All Pass

Gray was in the West seat and led his doubleton spade against 3NT. Declarer held up the spade ace till the third round and you can see that normal play is for declarer to lead to the diamond king and concede two diamonds and two spades. However on the third round of spades Gray threw his ace of diamonds!

Now declarer knew that East had the queen of diamonds, and that he would have to play on clubs instead. He crossed to the heart queen and played a club to the ten and jack. Gray now carefully exited with the diamond three, and declarer hopped up with the king and played a club to the queen and Gray's king.

At this stage declarer's hand appears to be high, but Gray now produced his impossible diamond queen as the defence's fifth trick. Now you may be thinking that there is no way you would ever find such a defence, but if you buy this book you just might…