Bridge Cardplay Made Easy
by David Bird

Finesse Bridge Books, £10.99, ISBN 0 953 87377 3

This very attractively presented book is the latest offering from the Finesse Books stable. It covers declarer play at an elementary level, dealing with topics such as taking a finesse, setting up a suit, discarding losers, planning a suit contract, making the right play at trick one, clues from the bidding and the hold-up in a suit contract. As you will gather from the topics covered, the book would suit a novice, the sort of person who finds most textbooks on play too advanced or too fast for their taste. The author takes very little for granted; for example he explains what 'to cash' means.

I mention the design as a positive feature, and I would like to expand on this. Many pages feature a tip or shortcut highlighted in a box. The chapters end with a clipboard recap of the points covered during the chapter and there is a quiz to test the reader's understanding. There are eighteen chapters in all, and a teacher could use each one as a lesson. The book runs to just over two hundred pages, making it good value.

As you may have gathered by now, the difficulty level of the material in the book is not as high as that of Bridge Plus. However, some the quizzes would not look out of place in this magazine. My chosen example comes from the chapter headed "Finessing into the Safe Hand" and I will forewarn you that the answer is not completely straightforward.

You play in 3NT with no opposition bidding (perhaps you opened a 12-14 1NT and North raised to game). West leads the 7 and East plays the Q. You hold up the ace and East returns the 2. How will you play the contract?

8 4   Q 4   A K 10 7   A 10 9 6 2

A 10 3   K J 10 3   Q J 6   Q J 8

It is easy to be hasty here. If the spades are 4-4, the thing to do is to knock out the A. That way you will make nine tricks by way of one spade, three hearts, four diamonds and a club. The snag is that another explanation exists for the play to the first two tricks. East may have started with a doubleton Q-2 of spades. In this case driving out the hA will not be such a bright idea if West holds both the A and the K, when you might have run five club tricks. True, given that we are assuming the lead comes from K-J-9-7-6-5, this does not seem very likely, but perhaps West is a cautious bidder.

To keep both options open you should refuse to take the second round of spades and win the third. Now, depending upon whether East follows to the third round, you will know whether to try the club finesse.

Julian Pottage

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