By Jason Rosenfeld and Prahalad Rajkumar
$19.95
Soft cover
172 pages

Rating: A
Reviewed by Dave Smith
A twisted mind

This book is subtitled Play Problems for You with Bridge Baron Analysis and the authors are two of the developers. As you might expect from the subtitle, the book is a series of bridge problems. After the authors present and explain the solution, they discus how Bridge Baron played or defended when it was presented with the problem - that's the "twist".

The problems are from NABCs online play and other bridge venues. The deals vary from challenging to very difficult and present something for both advance and expert players. If you are stuck, hints are offered. As a bonus, electronic copies of the problems are available online, and readers can download and experiment with them sing Bridge baron.

You don't have to download anything, however, to take a fascinating and never-before-seen glimpse inside the world of computer bridge I found it interesting to learn which type deals the computer had no problems with, and in which type deals it. The authors are remarkably frank about Bridge Baron's strengths and weaknesses. If you are not interested in the computer solving aspects, then you'll be happy to learn the problems stand on their own. Here's an example:

West leads the   ♣K, you win the ace and East drops the 9. You have three losers, so you have to hope the defender�s communication is tangled. If East has the ♥A and a singleton club, West cannot get in to cash his club. While drawing trump, you discard one spade from dummy, but you must not discard a second. Let's say you now lead a heart. East will duck. If you continue hearts, East will hold up until the third round, then exit with the   ♠A. This plan doesn�t work because you�ll still have a club to lose at the end. Instead, after one round of heart, you have to lead a spade yourself. East wins the ace and plays a second spade, which you ruff. Now you lead a second heart- East has to duck again. You switch gears again, however, and lead a club. West wins, but has nothing but clubs left. Now do you see why it was important to leading Spades before leading a second heart? With this line of play you will end up discarding a heart loser on a club, even though originally you were planning to discard you club loser on heart! When the Bridge Baron was given the contract to play, he improved on the above line of play. The Baron led ♠K after drawing trumps, and then arranged to ruff two more spades. This would have been critical in case East had a bid 4 ♠ with only a six-card suit.