British Bridge Almanack
Compiled and Edited by Peter Hasenson

£32 from 77 Publishing, tel 020 8203 9882, ISBN 0 9549241 0 X

Who won the Spring Fours for the second year running in 1981, and do you really care? Certainly if it was you and possibly even if not - if you are one of the many people around who delight in looking up old records in our increasingly statistically-oriented world.

Knowing who did what and when is only just a small part of this wonderful labour of love by Peter Hasenson, free-lance property consultant and owner of the 77 Bridge Club in London. There is just so much in this superbly presented volume that it is difficult to know where to start. We begin in fact by looking at the history of bridge, the inception of the EBU and the County Associations, and the first televised game of bridge. There are a number of biographies of leading bridge personalities from those early pioneering days and an article by Somerset Maugham describing his great love for the game. Nearly ten pages are spent on the Reese-Shapiro affair of 1965 from both an American and a British point of view, and the famous match between the legendary Blue Team and a British team sponsored by Martell's Cognac. There are more biographies taken from a later period and Robert Sheehan, in an appreciation of his late partner, Irving Rose, reminded me of a hand I wanted to forget. You hold:

A K Q 5     A K 10 7     A 8     8 4 2

You hear the hand on your left open 3. Partner passes and Rose on your right bids 5. You double, partner bids 5 and Rose now bids 6. Surely partner has a void or singleton club now, so you bid 6, a good enough contract - until they get a club ruff at trick two! Yes, Rose had pre-empted in clubs twice on a singleton. For the record my partner - who also writes in this book of his experience in winning a cool half a million on a famous television show - held:

J 7 3     Q J 9 8 4 2     5 2     K 3

You don't have to be the greatest player in the world to get your name or photo in this book, for as well as all the results from the major British championships since time began, there are detailed results from each county giving information of their championship pairs and teams winners. And of course results from the Camrose matches and who played and won, and who played and lost, the European and World championships - in fact just about everything you could possible wish to know.

There is other material I haven't mentioned, lots of it, and I can say with absolute assurance that there is something for everyone to be found within the covers. It isn't cheap at £32 but worth splashing out for, and is certainly different from any other bridge book you might find. Tremendous stuff. As for the question at the beginning of this review . . . well, modesty forbids.

Dave Huggett

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