Really Easy Competitive Bidding
compiled by Sandra Landy

English Bridge Union, £9.99, ISBN 0 9543685 1 7

This is the ninth book in the splendid 'Really Easy' series published by the E.B.U. I say 'splendid' because although the other volumes have somehow passed me by, I was very much taken with this book and can only assume that the others are of the same high quality.

Competitive bidding isn't really easy at all of course, but this book does a lot to dispel some of the fog surrounding many half-understood ideas.

Basically it is divided into three sections, namely: 'Competitive Bidding When Opponents Open', 'Defensive Bidding When We Have Opened', and 'Conventions When Competing'. The book covers all the basic stuff but also introduces the reader to some of the more useful treatments which have been adopted by so many leading players. Different ways of raising partner according to the strength of the hand via splinters and jump fits are just two of the ideas discussed, and at the end of each section there are oodles of examples, sometimes of the 'What went wrong?' variety. There are a couple of very interesting pages on low level redoubles, about which the average player knows absolutely nothing, mainly because it is a difficult and complex subject and is almost universally ignored by writers. That was good. What wasn't good for me - and I realise I am now riding a favourite hobby-horse - was the introduction on page nine to the Law of Total Tripe - er, sorry, Law of Total Tricks. I suspect even the most accomplished players only pretend to find it useful, because there are too many imponderables for it to be really worth its weight, but to introduce it so early in what is really an improvers' book is just a little too rich for my liking.

I did very much like in the last section the treatment on how to respond to partner's two-suited overcall. In most books the whole effort is concentrated on the overcall itself, but the responder to the overcaller has to realise how valuable his hand is, which certainly entails a lot more than just counting points.

Apart from the little quibble mentioned earlier, I have nothing but fulsome praise. The book is extremely well presented in rather fetching black and red colours for the suits, and at the end there are twelve case-studies which put many of the ideas learned into practice and we see what happens sometimes when those ideas are spurned.

Dave Huggett

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