Customer Reviews

The Fun Way to Serious Bridge

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fun, easy, quick way to establish basics with potential party-bridge player entering duplicate play. I keep 2 copies so I can loan one to new partners. His other book Fun Way to Advanced Bridge is an excellent followup.

If you're a pretty good card player, the hardest thing about learning Bridge is becoming fluent in the specialized language of bidding. Mr. Lampert actually makes this task enjoyable with his great cartoons. They make it easy to recall the proper bid(s) in each situation you encounter. This book is proof that a picture is worth a thousand words.

My impression when I picked this book up was that there would be tons of cartoons to help remember all of the "rules", e.g, my partner bids 1S, my hand has 10 points, therefore I should do this. In my view, there are not enough cartoons to really help remember the material. So, from this point of view, the book is not successful. Where the book does shine is in its highly concentrated explanation of the basics. I carry this book in my briefcase and read portions of it every day. Think of this book as a supplementary collection of notes to augment your other bridge books. This would be an good, inexpensive textbook for a 10-week class on bridge basics, for example. I think if you really learn the material in this book, you will be a very good beginner with ample room to grow.

I have looked at several bridge books for beginners. This one breaks things down step by step, so you're not overwhelmed with information. It also explains the logic behind bids and plays, which makes them easier to understand and remember. It is by far the best beginner bridge book I have seen.

I hold this book as the model of books I'd like to write -- on any topic. I think it helps that the author's a cartoonist. I'm ordering 8 more copies now -- I just taught a new batch of bridge players.

This book's great cartoons and straightforward approach make learning bridge fun and easy. I recommend this book to many of my students: they seem to enjoy reading it and come away with a firm grasp of the basics. The cartoons and helpful summaries really stick in your mind!

The primary appeal of this book is its thinness. Bridge already has a daunting reputation, and thick books don't help. The goal of a beginners bridge book should show the student enough of the game to get them to the table. Some of the more esoteric cases and topics can be postponed.

This book accomplishes these goals admirably. Nonetheless, I would have appreciated a second summary chart covering respones to a bid of 2 Club Stayman.

Still, do not be deceived - this book requires multiple readings to ensure that it all sinks in.

I have played bridge on and off ( mostly off ) for 45 years having learned Goren years ago. This simple and easy to use book is a great tool to remind me of all of the basics I have forgotten or never learned. It also takes the reader up to the level of most casual players. Fastest reference I have found on the subject and I have given a dozen copies out to friends who agree and use it regularly.

As one of the other reviewers noted, there is a dearth of good introductory bridge books. This book is not bad, but it is very busy and focuses on memorizing rules -- not a good thing, despite the numerous cartoons designed to help you remember. The book is a bit childish and might be good for teaching a kid, I can't see an adult using this to learn with though.

Most of the other books are at least slightly better. Root's ABC's of Bridge is more thorough and less busy, and Penick's Beginning Bridge Complete will get you playing much quicker. But even these books are heavy on memory work and light on teaching you to think. Furthermore, because all of these books are focusing on memorizing instead of thinking things through, they frequently "simplify" modern bidding to make it "easier" to learn. Doing this however, destroys the logic behind the bidding, making it almost impossible for a beginner to learn.

INSTEAD OF THIS BOOK, you should get Alan Truscott's Bridge in 3 weeks, the absolute best book, and the *only* one I'd recommend. The writing is superb, which you would expect from the Bridge editor of the NY Times. The book focuses on teaching you to think at the table and will get you playing the game quickly. More over because this book focuses on logic instead of memorization, it actually teaches you to bid and play in the way that most actual players do, making it easier to advance beyond the book.

I have been trying to learn bridge for quite a while now. I have gone through a lot of books at the beginner's level. This one was my first one ever I got and, NATURALLY, it was not that helpful; too dense. There were certain things that annoyed me then, but mostly the underlying lack of reasoning which was replaced by the copious use of mnemonics.

This was the way my bridge odyssey started: looking for books that showed the logic and principles of the game. Surprisingly, I could barely find any! Even the "bibles" written by the "gurus" fail to teach rational thinking when it comes to bridge. Instead, what they really present are flowcharts, decision trees, and point ranges to remember. Then, we the readers are just trying to find easy ways to memorize unconnected snippets.

It is for this reason that bridge is so diificult to learn: there are no teachers out there, just people who have been playing forever and had no chance to forget what they have memorized over the years. Unless you feel like playing a few hundred rubbers per month, most books on bridge are useless to someone who has daily obligations.

Along the way, the bridge community lost the ability to transmit the ability to play the game. Bridge has only survived because of passionate rookies like us who are willing to go through the pain of reading these "books" and then connecting the dots.

So, going back to this book, I now realise that you cannot learn from this book, and once you have learned you do not need this book.

The books that you can learn from are the books by Root and the book by Watson, both written by great teachers. However, reading them is a brutal experience in dry writting.