Test Your Bridge Brain Against the Experts

This book offers a collection of 66 hands that were played at the top level and reported by expert writers and commentators in newspapers, books, or magazines, but where mistakes and misanalyses occurred. These mistakes include some obvious blunders, but most are subtler. In many cases, the misplay went unpunished, thanks to inattentive opponents or a fortunate card distribution. Over the course of a match, however, consistently making the best play will win out. The path to success is not so much by executing brilliancies as by eliminating errors on the more straightforward hands. I am inviting readers to use this same approach to solve 66 problems in play and defense as well as opening-lead problems. For all of the hands presented, we shall see the way the hands were played at the table (using teams' IMP scoring throughout) and then, on turning the page, how they should have been played and analyzed.