Search MSO Worldwide

Reviews

Bridge Card Play - Attack And Defence
by Marc Smith
£9.99 available from Bridge Plus

In his preamble, the author starts by asking: "Are you tired of finishing second or third? If you could make even one extra contract per session, or beat the opponents' games just a little more often, those few additional match-points or IMPs would elevate you to a regular winner." In Bridge Cardplay, Marc Smith concentrates on key aspects of declarer play and defence, while bypassing much of the peripheral, which means that it is chock full of essential material. The author makes the point that: "Many of the techniques employed by the regular winners are not as difficult as you might imagine."

Taking a simple example, the following deal is from the section called 'Looking for a slight extra chance':

E-W Game
Dealer South

			A 9 3
			Q 8 7 6 3
			K 4
			9 8 4
	4 2	N W E S			K Q 8 7 5
	J 4				9
	Q 10 8 5 2				J 9 7 3
	K J 6 3				10 5 2
			J 10 6
			A K 10 5 2
			A 6
			A Q 7

As South, the dealer, your One Heart opening bid is raised to game and West leads the four of spades. Looking just at the North-South hands, how would you plan the play?

The double spade finesse offers high odds and, even if that fails, you can fall back on the club finesse, increasing your chances to around 90%. However, your combined holding in the club suit is such that the odds of success are even better than that.

Rising with dummy's ace of spades at Trick 1, you draw trumps in two rounds, cash your two top diamonds and lead a spade. When East wins and returns a trump, you can confidently cover whatever he leads, and West has to return a club or give you a ruff and discard. Even if West held a spade honour, he could only cash it but would still be endplayed.

Note that, as the cards lie, had you played a low spade from dummy at Trick 1, East would have won and returned a club. Thereafter, the contract cannot be made. Your winning line was only 3% better than taking lots of finesses, but that kind of 'slight extra chance' will pay dividends in the long run.

As you may have gathered, the first half of the book is on Attack, or declarer play. The second half is on Defence, which Smith starts with a chapter on the 'Count and Attitude Dilemma' followed by one on 'Fine Tuning Your Defensive Signalling' before going on to deeper subjects.

This book is especially worthwhile because it tackles the essentials.

Peter Littlewood