Bridge Made Easy Book 4

I have taught bridge since 1978 and was on the ABTA Book Commitee which chose this book for the "Book of the Year" award. When I teach a course on defense, I make available Eddie Kantar's "Introduction to Defender's Play," and I have recommended Caroline Sydnor's Book 4 with the marked cards. I suggest to my students to get together with a foursome and deal the 40 hands, four at the end of each of ten chapters in the latter book, to practice what they are trying to learn. Each chapter discusses a particular topic with many practical examples and is followed by a quiz to reinforce the topic. I particularly learned a lot myself about how, as a teacher, to present some of the ideas, especially from the chapter "The Wizadry of Suit Development," and the one on Safety Plays. Caroline knows how to explain, in ways that intermediates can understand, and remember.

This book, volume 4 of a series of 4 books, is a good book for low intermediates or intermediates to improve their defensive play. I read it after reading Introduction to Defender's Play by Edwin Kantar and Defense in the 21st Century by Audrey Grant (two excellent books also) and found it to be a good read after those two books. Caroline is excellent at laying out numerous examples to explain the strategy behind the various principles of opening leads, second and third hand play, signals, discards, counting, and lead directing doubles. Each chapter includes "drills" to allow self-testing so the reader can tell how well she absorbed the lessons. The "solutions" to the drills explain why the correct solutions are best and why other choices are not so good. After the drills, each chapter includes four hands explaining in detail how the hands can be played and the consequences of the various directions of play. This will be on my shelf as a reference to go to as a refresher for defensive play. Well worth the low price.