Audrey Grant's Better Bridge

by Audrey Grant

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822016664
• ISBN13: 9780822016663
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Centennial Press
• Length: 102 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Double Three Notrump!

You know, there are only about twenty permissible words in bridge bidding: the name and number of the suit, "Pass," "Double," and "Redouble." Yet from that comes one of the most fascinating games the world has ever known and Grant is on top of it all. BETTER BRIDGE: Bidding is an excellent book. In fact, the best beginner's book (and series) I have encountered for the now-dominant "Five Card Major" bidding system now "de rigeur" in most of the USA and Canada. (If you don't know what "four card" or "five card" systems mean, hold off on buying this volume and go for Audrey's "Basics" volume instead.) Ms. Grant goes patiently through the rules of bidding, when to bend or break them, and when they can save your life! As in most books, she starts with simple opening bids and the "point count" system (where an Ace is worth 4 points, a King 3, Queen 2 and Jack one point). She concentrates on the all-important fit between you and your partner, sometimes called "an opening hand facing an opening hand equals game" and that strategy is where the game is right now, so to speak. She deals with the additive logic of the point count in finding the Three Notrump game bid, which is relatively easy, often much easier than the novice thinks it is. But where Grant really shines is the emphasis on contracting for game with a total of eight cards in your and your partner's chosen major suit (hearts or spades), either five on one side of the table and three on the other, or four apiece (and all this from bridge's tiny bidding vocab). Going further, she deals with what to do when your opponents are messing up "your" system by intefering bidding. Along with Grant's simple, even charming teaching styles, two other interlocked benefits stand out: she teaches us to think for ourself BUT offers evidence to show how violating bidding conventions gets you into bad contracts where you go set (lose points to your opponents). In other words, she does a good deal of imparting wisdom, more so than most bridge books allow that the very novice is capable of. So read "Basics," "Bidding" and then move on to the other books in this series. You'll not only get smarter, you'll have fun and as long as there are three other people, a pencil, a deck of cards and a pad of paper around, you will never run out of something to do! (By the way, if you want to learn the kind of bridge in which any FOUR-card major can open bidding, you might enjoy Alfred Sheinwold's FIVE WEEKS TO WINNING BRIDGE, which takes you from the basics, the bidding, and even the play at a fairly advanced level. Quite a lot for a one-volume work.)