Bridge Additions 96 by Matthew Granovetter

This is an important book, a cornucopia of seemingly random tidbits of advice on bidding, opening leads, and defensive carding. The central theme is that as bidding becomes more complex and committees less tolerant of hesitations, it is important to keep your own methods as simple and consistent as possible in order to avoid having good boards overturned in committee hearings because you could not remember your system or interpret partner's bidding fast enough to avoid the hesitation police. In addition to novelties that are a few years ahead of their time such as Button Pads (an alternative to convention cards as a means of describing your bidding and carding methods), you will find good advice about many popular conventions, such as: (1) use responsive doubles only when partner overcalls, not when he doubles (you need a penalty double then); (2) forget Drury (the occasional successful stop at two of a major cannot compensate for the loss of the club suit); and (3) don't use major suit limit raises (there's no way to invite game).

The best part of the book is the discussion of opening leads. Granovetter recommends aggressive leads only against 2NT, 3NT, and suit contracts at the five level. Against suit contracts, he recommends Robot Leads, in which you always choose your lead from a predefined priority table: AK, side singleton, KQ, QJ, J10, xx, xxx, small trumps, 10x, Jx, Qx, Kx, Hxx or longer (H = 10, J, Q, or K), Ax, any other ace lead. This has two advantages: (1) partner will always know that you do not hold a card combination ranking higher on the priority list; and (2) you will not be tempted to make genius leads. Presumably, he would condone violating the priority list when partner has bid or when the auction clearly calls for a trump lead. Against notrump, he dumps the popular J denies; 10 or 9 implies 0 or 2 higher honors in favor of a treatment in which J neither confirms nor denies the ace or king, while 10, 9, or a low spot card implies a higher honor, and a high spot card denies a good suit. In addition, any honor lead implies the next lower card; if instead partner holds the next lower card he is expected to drop it. This is an extension of the now standard lead of the Q from KQ109, when partner is expected to drop the jack if he holds it.

There's lots of other good stuff here, such as the Lead Directing Pass and a simplified approach to making decisions based on the Law of Total Tricks. The book is highly recommended for advanced players.