Sabine Auken: I Love This Game
Stuck for a small Christmas present for your bridge partner? Or, more likely perhaps, afraid that those dear to you will only find another inappropriate item of DIY or knitwear without prompting? Then though this book maybe hard to get quickly, I suspect anyway you may have to draw their attention to this column or perhaps it will help finding something to spend those tokens on.
Sabine Auken's I Love This Game (Master Point Press) won the International Bridge Press Association's book of the year – and deservedly so, it's the best I've read in a long time. It's a work where her passion for bridge and much else besides comes through in the text; she talks with candour about playing in the women's game, the effects on her personal life but never ducks real bridge either. There are tough technical discussions and she presents the way she thinks and solves problems at the table with great clarity.
The book takes as a framework the final sixteen deals of the 2001 Venice cup between France and Germany in Paris. I know what happened because I was there – you should read the book to find out. Each chapter / deal naturally gives rise to a discursion, sometimes about technique, but as often about bidding or overall approach. This is an example from the discussion about suit preference signals. Sabine rapidly establishes the general principles; you lead a high card for a high suit, low for low (but when? a topic also covered) and then she moves on: as East this is what you see,
- 3
- 54
- 10875
- 986532
South's call was a transfer to hearts. You naturally lead your singleton spade, dummy appears with:
- 987
- QJ10832
- A6
- A5
Partner produces the ace and leads back the knave; king and you ruff. The task is now to lead the minor where partner has the king. She will gain the lead with the trump ace and cash the minor king. But… Has she led the knave from AJ10xxx and so it was her highest card to do the job? Or from AQJxxx and it was the lowest?
Well there's been a skip somewhere in my bridge education because I've missed this: it seems that regular partnerships establish rules for this situation rather than guess. The author suggests queen or ten for the higher suit, knave for the lower. But Sabine doesn't stop there, she goes on to suggest ways to separate requests for ruffs rather than high cards by suit-preference (second highest and second lowest). I've no space to explain that - you really will have to buy the book.
Published Saturday 16.Dec.2006