Review 176, 25 Ways to Be a Better Defender, Dave Huggett

Reviews

25 Ways to Be a Better Defender
by Barbara Seagram and David Bird

Master Point Press, £10.95 plus p&p from The Bridge Shop. Tel: 020 7486 8222

This is another in the best selling '25' series, and I would imagine it is intended for students who have just completed a beginner's course but would like some rigid instruction on how to defend competently. The authors are two of the best-known names in the business and as one would expect from them the book is a class product, although it has to be admitted there is little here that hasn't been said a million times before. But hey, if you're new to the game you won't know that! In time-honoured tradition we start with opening leads before coming on to second- and third-hand play, and the problem of whether to cover honours with honours. All this is classified as 'the basics of sound defense' and precedes a much more difficult section on signalling methodology and the necessity to do some rudimentary counting of declarer's tricks. (This may be easy for you now, but is nearly impossible when you start out. Have you forgotten?) The third and last section is entitled, rather grandly, 'Becoming a great defender' and deals with such tactics as unblocking honours, cutting declarer's communications and promoting trump tricks - nasty, spiteful things like that. I liked this hand taken from the more difficult latter part of the book:

	7 4 2 A K 6 8 7 5 9 5 3 2
K 8 5 Q J 10 5 J 9 3 J 8 4		3 9 7 4 3 Q 10 6 2 A Q 10 7
	A Q J 10 9 6 8 2 A K 4 K 6

West	North	East	South
			1
Pass	2	Pass	4
End

Sitting West, you lead the Q against the spade game. Declarer wins and plays a trump to the queen. Can you see how wrong it would be to win this trick?

Sure, you can only make the K once, but by ducking you will most likely persuade declarer that the finesse is right, and as a consequence he may well use his last precious entry to dummy - the K - to repeat the manoeuvre. As a consequence, he will have ultimately to lead away from his club holding and lose two tricks in that suit, which with a trump and diamond loser will spell defeat. Of course if you had won the first spade trick declarer would have used the K entry to lead up to his K. Sneaky or what!

At the end of every chapter there is a summary of all the salient points followed by a quiz to reinforce everything that has been learnt. This is all well written and well explained even if it is a little 'samey'. Apparently, the book is the last of the '25' series. A pity, as I was looking forward to 25 Ways to Humiliate Your Partner While Making Yourself Look Good in the Process. Sadly, I shall have to wait.

Dave Huggett