A Guide to be a Good Bridge Player, by Frank Fongasira

When I first read the Table of Contents of this book on the author's website, I was overjoyed. Here was a book that seemed capable of improving the aspiring player's card play in the same way I have sought to improve his bidding via Foundations of Modern American Bidding. When the author, a former internationalist from Malaysia now living in the USA, sent me a review copy, my first impression, gleaned mainly from the ungrammatical title, was that the author badly needed an American editor. That observation was reinforced as I began to read and to observe the author's unfamiliarity with American bidding methods, but seemed less important as I continued to encounter example after example of brilliant card play and defense, with short but lucid explanations. The chapter on "Safety Plays" should be required reading for rubber bridge and KO Teams players; it's the best collection of safety plays I have seen anywhere.

These are not double-dummy problem hands, but the sort of every-day hands that can be solved easily if you can ssk yourself the right questions and come up with the right answers, but this requires careful attention to the bidding, opening lead, and early play. Most Flight A players would get more than 80% of them right; B players maybe half of them; and C players can feel good about themselves if they get 20-30% right. That pretty well defines the potential audience for this book as B and C players (along with A players whose main focus is on card play, and teachers, who could find a wealth of lesson hands here to enhance their card play classes. I would not recommend this book for those still in the Intermediate/Novice category as defined by the ACBL, and C players are cautioned not to pay much attention to the bidding used in this book, since doing so could undermine the bidding instruction in Foundations.