Bridge Play Unravelled
by Freddie North

BT Batsford, £10.99, ISBN 0 7134 8883 2

Popular as a player, writer and ambassador to the game of bridge, the author, Freddie North, has come up with an interesting and effective way of presenting declarer-play techniques. In the first section of the book, he covers all the standard plays in an alphabetical glossary with a brief explanation and simple example for each. If you have a favourite, it is likely to be there; to name but a few, he includes: avoidance, counting, discovery play, dummy reversal, elimination, loser on loser, Morton’s fork, restricted choice, ruffing finesse, scissors coup, squeezes and unblocking. I particularly liked one of his choices of terminology: ‘precaution play’. As he explains, this is similar to a safety play but it cannot concede a gratuitous trick. For example with K-Q-9- 4 facing A-10-8-5-2, you cash the king first (rather than the ace) to cater for a 4-0 break either side.

North devotes the bulk of the book to fiftyeight problem deals. As is customary, he presents your hand, dummy, the bidding and (where appropriate) the early play on the right-hand page and the solution on the overleaf left-hand page. He challenges readers to identify the category to which the deal belongs, and asks them to form a plan. At the solution stage, he tells you the category to which the deal belongs, what you should have looked for, the recommended plan and, last but not least, what not to do. By adopting this format, he naturally focuses on the principal point of the deal and this approach generally works well.

Bridge Plus readers should like the difficulty level of the subject material, which is similar to the magazine’s and is normally well chosen and immaculately laid out.

K 6 4 3   K Q 7 5   7 5 4   J 5

A J 8 7 5   8 3 2   3   A Q 6 4

West opens a weak (12-14) 1NT and you, South, optimistically end up in 4. West leads the A
and K, East encouraging with the ten and then the eight. When you play trumps, you find West with Q-x. How should you continue?

The category is ‘Hopeful Assumption’! Thanks to the friendly trump layout and the lack of wasted diamond values in dummy, the contract is only in danger now if East has the A. Can you do anything about this? A count of points tells you that if East has the A and the Q, West needs the K for the 1NT opening. This makes taking the club finesse a futile exercise. Instead, you lead a low club from hand towards the jack. If West wins (you have no club loser if West ducks), you can discard two hearts from dummy on your club winners and subsequently ruff the third round of hearts in dummy. You are not worried if East captures the J with the king; in this case, West will be marked with the A.

Julian Pottage

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