Concise Bridge
by Sally Brock

D & B publishing, £9.99, ISBN 1-904468-14-4

Sally Brock's latest book is a handy little vade-mecum of over 300 pages and by the time readers have reached the last page, they should know just about everything there is to know in order to become familiar with all the basic precepts of bridge.

Brock starts off assuming zero knowledge, and introduces the student to the game via Mini Bridge, which is a neat way of getting a beginner to start playing hands almost immediately. Instead of bidding, each player in rotation cites the number of high-card points they hold in their hand, by the end of which the player with the higher number of points from the pair with the higher number of points looks at his partner's hand and states how many tricks they might make in excess of six and with a nominated trump suit or no trump suit at all. Get it? Play then proceeds along normal lines. Although there is no bidding as such, the concept of the opening lead is addressed and some fairly basic instruction on declarer play technique is given.

After all this has, one hopes, been digested, Brock starts to deal with bidding theory: first the uncontested auction, then with everyone having a go à la real life. The last quarter of the book is devoted to declarer play and defence. All this sounds wonderful, and there is no doubt that Brock writes well and with a deep understanding of the game, but I have to question some of the ideas the students are meant to grasp almost from the beginning. An early hand revolves around which finesse the student should take, but the sad fact is that it might take months for students to recognise a finesse at all and when they do, more often than not they daren't take it (in case it does not work). The concept of 'tricks on top', too, is inaccessible to all but a very few beginners because they are unable, at that early stage, to see the hand as a whole instead of just a jumble of cards. I have to wonder whether the author has ever taught beginners.

My main concern, however, is that the student is introduced to bidding using a strong no-trump and five-card majors - which means, of course, that for a part of the time they are being asked to bid three card suits! The wonderful thing about Acol is that it is such a natural system, and it is relatively easy to understand that you should bid your longest suit because it is nice to have as many trumps as possible. Ask beginners to bid short suits and all logic flies out the window. I suspect that this book is aimed at an American or Continental audience but even so, if anyone who had digested the contents went down to their local bridge club, they would be very hard put to find anyone they could play with.

The subtitle to this book is 'The Compact Guide for Beginners' and it just isn't that, at least not entirely. Maybe the first part is, but from then on you would need to have quite a bit of experience to understand all of the ideas. I liked the writing and I liked the presentation - I am just not convinced that the book really reaches its target audience.

Dave Huggett

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