Play with the Champions
by Ron Klinger

BT Batsford, £10.99, ISBN 0 7134 880 8

Billed as a 'bridge movie', Play with the Champions follows the format of the "Championship Quiz" articles in Bridge Plus. Indeed many, if not all, the deals used first appeared in that feature. What you get is one player's hand, normally from an important event, and the opportunity to face both the bidding and play decisions that came up at the table - or, if there was a blunder, the decisions that should have arisen!

Aided by the author's masterly commentary and analysis, the book succeeds in its aim to help the reader think like an expert - hopefully not just for the duration of the book! The one down-side to the layout is that on average each deal occupies over four pages. Thus you get only thirty-six deals in all despite the fact that the book runs to one hundred and seventy-six pages. Having said that, the author has made a good choice of material and in some cases the reader has the chance to play several different contracts, or perhaps the same contract but on a different lead, so the book does offer reasonable value.

Perhaps the other thing that may not be everyone's cup of tea (although I regard it as a plus) is that you will encounter a good variety of bidding systems. The back-cover blurb mentions that defensive problems are included, although they are fairly few and far between. It is, however, interesting to note the number of defensive lapses made at the table, proving that even international players are fallible. The other thing that struck me was that on more than one occasion the player who originally held the hand eschewed a straightforward bid in favour of either a complex or undisciplined action. This, however, is not the case on this hand:

A K Q 10   A K Q 2   A   K Q J 10

West	North	East	South
			2
2	Dbl	3	?
End

Assume that partner's double shows any hand that would have made a 2 negative. What do you do?

A pass is forcing and this rates to be the winning action. Partner bids 4 and, after checking for aces, you sign off in 6. West leads the K and dummy appears:

4 3 2   7 5 3   J 4 2   9 8 7 4

You cannot afford to ruff two major-suit cards in dummy, so either the 2 or the 10 will need to score. You have no options about how to play the hearts for four tricks, so the best line is to knock out the A, draw trumps and play on hearts. As the cards lie you are able to count the West hand as 2-4-5-2, so you cash two top spades, ruff the fourth heart in dummy and take the marked spade finesse.

Julian Pottage

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