|
|
|
Bridge with Brunner - Acol Bidding for Budding Experts BT Batsford, £12.99, ISBN 0 7134 8799 2 In her first book, Bridge with Brunner - Acol Bidding for Improvers, Michelle Brunner covered the basic groundwork necessary for an aspiring player at least to start to become proficient at Acol, while recognising the fact that many of the more useful ideas necessary for the modern competitive game had to be put on hold. Well, the wait is over! In this follow-up book Brunner selects a sensible selection of the current voguish ideas and presents them well, too. It is refreshing to realise that these are the tools that she has used throughout her career as teacher, professional and Ladies World Champion.
We are told to start with the idea of using Weak-two Bids in every suit except clubs - although the use of 2 In the third section we look at the idea of treatments, that is to say how do we interpret various notions, such as bidding the opponents' suit, for example. In fact this is quite a complex idea, meaning different things in different situations, and it obviously varies depending on whether partner has opened or overcalled, and if partner has opened whether he did so with a suit bid or no-trumps. All these situations are explained clearly, with the underlying logic behind these ideas explained too. That is so important. People often say: 'There is so much to remember!' when really all that is required is the ability to work things out from first principles. I particularly liked the pages spent describing the forcing 2NT rebid after a two-level response from partner. Once again logic demands that it should be so, and following that principle certainly increases immeasurably the definition you can get into certain sequences. It is difficult to make the transition from improver to budding expert, and you need to have just the right mix of science and common sense. Brunner tackles this job well and thoroughly, although there is certainly a lot of hard work ahead of the reader if he is to assimilate all of the ideas. The book is none the worse for that, as it makes the reader think while at no time being boring. The only complaint I could possibly make about this follow-up book is the rather heavy usage of the exclamation mark! Dave Huggett |
|
© Bridge Plus 1999-2006
|
as an offensive weapon must be debatable - and then various conventions are added, starting with the now almost universally-accepted Transfers. I know from experience that this is a difficult idea to get across to relative newcomers to the game, but Brunner explains clearly why they are so much more important than just getting the strong hand to be declarer (which is the reason most people would give for playing them). She is also bold enough to eschew the idea of any form of Stayman over 2NT, preferring Baron instead. Negative Doubles, Two-suited Overcalls, Splinters and Roman Key-Card Blackwood are all discussed in depth and after each new idea there are just a trillion examples to make sure that the ideas have really been assimilated.
