The Daily Telegraph Easy Guide to Acol Bridge
by Patrick Jourdain

Batsford, £12.20 inc p&p from the Mr Bridge Mail Order Service Tel 01672 519219 (code BK32)

Patrick Jourdain, Bridge Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, has been teaching bridge for many years and it shows clearly in his latest offering.

What is missing in so many other books aimed at the newcomer to the game is trying to get inside the mind of the student. It may be easy for you and me to understand that A-Q-x opposite K-J-x is only worth three tricks in no-trumps but it just isn't so to the learner. Actually only a few pages are spent on the basics of card-play because this is primarily a book on bidding and after explaining in detail the rules concerning the legality of a bid and how to recognise an opening hand using the standard Milton Work point count, the author starts to look at hands which qualifier as an 'opener' - with the choice of suit fairly obvious in that it is the longest in the hand. He goes on to identify how to respond to this with support for the suit opened and then without support. His advice on bidding balanced hands is well-founded and the choice of which four-card suit to choose is made more obvious by the fact that the opener's main concern should be to bid some level of no-trumps as soon as possible.

There is a small chapter on defence before the competitive auction is introduced and the latter part of the book deals with higher level bids, strong and weak, and some basic information on slam bidding. And finally the student is invited to come to terms with the notion that some bids are not to be taken at face value at all but can have hidden and esoteric meanings such as Stayman and Fourth Suit Forcing. At the end of every chapter there is a summary of what should have been learnt and a few exercises to hammer home those ideas. There is even the obligatory chapter on etiquette.

I am a teacher myself and I liked the way the writer seemed interesting without being patronising. I would just quibble with the idea of adding on points for singletons, extra trumps, that sort of thing, because in my experience just getting the basic count right can be hard enough, but apart from that I thought it was a job very well done.

Dave Huggett

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