25 Conventions for Acol Players
by Sandra Landy, Mark Horton, Barbara Seagram

Master Point Press, £12.99 inc. p&p from The Bridge Shop. Tel: 020 7486 8222

This book is a special version of the best-selling 25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know (by Barbara Seagram and Marc Smith) but written with just Acol players in mind. It is intended for people new-ish to the game but who are nevertheless thirsting to acquire a higher degree of sophistication than they currently possess. and is based on the doubtlessly true premise that everyone loves a convention!

Mind you, the first eight chapters merely deal with stuff that should be known already - a refresher course, if you like, of some of the cornerstones of Acol. So we re-learn about Acol two-bids, Stayman, take-out doubles and negative doubles, that sort of thing. At the end of each chapter there is a helpful summary of all the key points together with a quiz to make sure the salient points have been digested. And naturally there is a full explanation of all the answers.

The remaining chapters of the book are divided into 'More Complicated' and 'Sophisticated Stuff' headings but in fact there is little to choose between either category. It is only here that I began to feel a little uneasy at some of the conventions thought worthy of mention. For example, Jacoby 2NT is undoubtedly a useful tool, but in the hierarchy of conventions it is quite a complex idea to get one's head around and surely much too complicated for the relative novice. There are all sorts of questions that need to be addressed when using that particular convention, such as what to do when the opponents interfere - as they so often do, alas - and none of that is discussed. It is a bit like giving someone a hand grenade but not telling them how to use it! However, some of the modern ideas are very easy to learn and should be at the disposal of everybody. Take the following hand for example:

A 3 2 Q 10 3 2  4 3  K Q 6 5

How do you bid this when partner opens 1 and the next hand bids 2 ? Can you see that you can now differentiate between a high-card raise in hearts and a pre-emptive one? With the former you bid the opponents' suit - here 3 - to say: 'I have at least a raise to 3 and my hand contains high-card values.' With the more pre-emptive hand type you merely bid 3 . Now this is a relatively new concept but certainly not outside the scope of any ambitious player, and I love the idea of using the opponents' interference to help the home side.

I do not know which author wrote what and it doesn't matter. The book, in large format, is very well put together and all the ideas are well presented. Apart from some slight misgivings at some of the choices of conventions made, I have nothing but good things to say about this book and I am sure it will emulate its famous predecessor.

Dave Huggett

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