The New Complete Book of Bridge
by by Albert Dormer with Ron Klinger

Cassell / Peter Crawley, paperback, £14.99, ISBN 0 304 36675 7

You will be pleased to hear that this book lives up to its name. It deals with every aspect of bidding: openings, rebids, continuations, competitive auctions, slam bidding and the bidding at pairs. It also covers opening leads, play at suit and no-trump contracts, deception and concealment and the endgame. It even has a section on Chicago (four-deal bridge). You will also be relieved to hear that almost all the advice given is consistent with mainstream thinking.

When Ron Klinger came to revise what had been The Complete Book of Bridge, I understand that the publishers asked him to bring all the bidding and defensive methods up to date. This he has done admirably. Unfortunately, what it appears the publishers failed to do was to give him licence to rewrite the manuscript, where necessary, in plain English. Perhaps they already know in their heart of hearts that this latest revision is still not the finished product because they have printed it in paperback. Surely, if a book with 448 pages is worth printing at all, it deserves a hardback.

The sometimes irritating writing style aside, this is in many ways an excellent book. It contains plenty of useful pieces of advice and interesting examples. Please take the East cards on this example and try to defeat South's 3NT contract:

A 7 5   K J   A J 9 5 4 2   9 3     Q J 4   Q 7 6 3   Q 10 6   J 10 7

After 1NT - 3NT, West leads the 6. Your jack holds the first trick and your queen the next, declarer following with the three and ten. On the second round West plays the two. How should you continue?

Since the Q looks like a sure entry, a third spade will defeat the contract if West has an entry, either the A or the A. Alternatively, if South has both aces, the only hope will be to switch to a club, playing West for K-8-x or better. How can you tell?

In theory, West is more likely to hold one of the aces than a specific club holding. All the same, you should switch to the J. West is marked with K-9-8-x-x and, with a sure side entry, would have overtaken the second spade to continue the suit.

Fortunately, if you cannot live with Dormer's apparent attempt to break the world record for the largest number of passive verbs ever seen in a bridge book and one or two other eccentricities, all is not lost. If you read Klinger's Guide to Better Acol Bridge and Guide to Better Card Play, you should find these cover most of the same subject areas as this book and in the usual highly readable Klinger style. If conventions and duplicate strategy are also of interest, I can strongly recommend Guide to Better Duplicate Bridge, which is a great book and superb value for money.

Julian Pottage

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