Customer Reviews

Win at Spades: Advanced Play and Strategy: Sophisticated Strategies, Techniques, and Tips for the Advanced Player

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is worth a buck or two in the cutout bin, but certainly not... to the advanced player it allegedly targets.

It's a thin book at 135 pages, and has a great deal of material that's inappropriate for its "advanced" audience. The first three chapters include such material as "a review of the basics" and "general spades information" which is fine for a beginner book, but not advanced.

The actual meat starts with chapter four, which opens with this doozy: "Novice players are always advised to review the trick-taking possibilities of their hands before proceeding with bidding." How earth shattering.

The writing style is rather wordy, and it's not uncommon to find six or eight consecutive sentences all ending in exclamation points. This gets old in a hurry. There are continous Bridge references which are both irrelevant and annoying. This is supposed to be a Spades book; I don't even know how to play Bridge.

Here are some other choice tips included in this book for us "advanced" players:

"The wrong bid can lead to a lot of problems." "The bid of nil has a certain degree of risk." "The making of a nil bid is usually a true team effort." "High spade holdings can be very dangerous" when bidding nil! "If your partner has bid a nil preceding your bid, and your hand has nil potential, forget" about bidding nil! When covering a nil, "Never lead a low card!" "The greatest opportunity to set the opponents is when the total of all tricks bid equals 12 or 13." When attacking a nil, "Do not lead a suit in which the nil bidder is void."

And on and on. The only chapters I found interesting were one on finessing, and one on partner signalling conventions. I do consider these "advanced" topics. But the rest of the book is just fluff to the advanced player.

I have been playing Spades regularly on the internet at the MSN Gaming Zone site during the past 4 years, averaging 20 or more games weekly. I play in the competitive rooms mostly and have participated in numerous zone-endorsed tourneys, finishing 1st in many. Having this experience, I still do not consider myself an "Expert" by any means. I'm always open-minded and receptive to tips and strategies used by others that may improve my skill.

Upon reading Mr. Andrews' book entitled Win At Spades - Advanced Play And Strategy, I found perfect examples of hands encountered in actual games, along with the author's professional analysis. As a result of reading this book, I have incorporated three or four new tips and strategies, enabling me to win more games.

I highly recommend Mr. Andrews' book for those looking for tips and strategies to improve their game, and I feel the...price tag on this book is a very good investment.

As a life-long spades player, I would like to thank Mr. Andrews for providing ideas about how to better my game. The name of the book says it all, if you get the book and implement the techniques, you WILL win at spades.

I have seen some reviews that criticize Mr. Andrews writing style. I thought the book was well written, but the purists among you might ask yourself the following question: Do you want a spades book written by a professional writer that plays spades as a hobby? I prefer a spades book written by a professional spader that writes for a hobby!

The book contains many clever conventions that can really give you an edge against your opponents. It deals with some fairly complex ideas, but an intelligent person with a desire to WIN will find tried and tested tools for improving their game.

Implementing Mr. Andrew's advanced techniques has given me a winning edge. It really makes the difference between a good player and a great player.

-Shannon Faith 4th Place 1999 Orlando Open Spades Tournament 1st Place July 99 ZESTOC Spades Tournament 1st Place March 99 Knit2Fit Zone Spades Tournament 1st Place Dec 99 Dawg Fight Tournament

I have a least 20 other major tournament wins... you be the judge :-)

After waiting eagerly for my copy to come fresh off the press, I was totally dissapointed. You will find simple general information leading into confusing lengthly drivel.

Some specific hands are explained play by play to show interesting points. Usually they were bid wrong in the first place and there is the reason for the set, not the so-called "excellent" play.

The general information is somewhat helpful and I did get one helpful hint on determining what lead your partner wants when you are void.

Mr Andrews uses information from Bridge experts as if the game of spades is so similiar to spades the information can be interchanged. In Bridge one is not penalized for taking overticks. In spades one is. This difference makes the play, although similiar in some ways, completely different in others.

The author states that expert players on the net will set your nil bid if you are not careful. No where does he show the different methods these "experts" use to set a nil bid. This is a good example of the general lack of information found for those looking for ADVAMCED tips.

It appears that the initial book for beginners is repeated here with useless information infused.

Please don't be deceived by the title. This book alone is excellent. However, the newest book by this author, "The Complete Win at Spades: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced" is practically identical to this one. There are only minor additions that have no relevance to the strategy sections, I counted only maybe 20pages maximum of difference. NOT WORTH IT. All pasages are word-for-word identical. Please disregard this book and look for the new one. Thank you for your time.

I found this to be an excellent book and would highly recommend it to all spades players. Each page gave me more insight to the game,stategies and technigues. I have seen a marked improvement in my ratings already. This book will remain on my bookshelf as I find myself reviewing it consistently as my game continues to improve.

A better title would be, "Win at Spades, Beginner play and Strategy: Techniques and Tips for the Beginner," because its unhelpful past that point. I found this book to be extremely disapointing. I expected it to have many conventions, strategies, and advanced logical thinking techniques to help one at the table. However, I found this book to only contain 25 deals, and everyone of them contained atleast one mistake. The most irritating part is that Mr. Andrews goes to a special point to mention every single card someone plays, wastes space talking about the wrong things, and he also writes in the passive voice. Most of his card logic is also ill concieved for the game of spades (perhaps more applicable to bridge only). The only advanced technique he mentions is finessing, but he offers no guidelines or helpful lines of thinking when on considers a finesse. In fact, most of the finesses taken in his 25 deals are practice finesses.

This is a 5-star book for a Spades lover at any level. It is extremely well organized, easy to read... and thank goodness has a touch of humor! I particularly liked the review of basics in the beginning. Some very good Spades players can benefit from this, and novice players can find it eases them into the nitty gritty.

I am a bit puzzled by the person who claims to be a Ph.D. in Math and expert in bridge, who also, obviously, sent two negative reviews pretending to be two people. (He gave himself away by using identical headlines.. does he have a personal grudge against the author???) Now I do not claim to be a bridge expert as he does... I only have 34 Master Points... but it should be clear to him that although the two games can be tremendously different in the bid and the play of the hand the analogies are most helpful. I venture to guess that any serious card player will have played bridge, pinochle, hearts... any of the bid/trick-taking games that I have heard evolved from Whist.

Invaluable in the Andrews book are the charts, glossaries, and hands laid out and discussed. I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to improve his Spades game.

I'm an avid reader and card player,I was fortunate enough to have much experience in the game of spades and found myself fairly confident.Alot was luck, but after reading Joe Andrews book on Win at Spades,advanced play and strategy I realized I had alot to learn. Now I feel like a knowledgeable player and luck does not play such a big part of my game.I am finding I can challenge the best of players and see what their skill consists of and play accordingly. I do know after reading his book I have lost very few games. I feel this book is a must for reading as it will take you from luck to knowledge and far more confident.As I read other reviews I noticed some negative comments, but saw also that they were kept anonymous, how sad that one cannot stand behind their opinions.

I play regularly in MSN's competitive rooms, and though I do not consider myself to be expert at anything, I do think I'm an advanced spades player. I was extremely disappointed with this book because I expected it to teach me something new and it didn't. The book consists of a series of example hands taken from real games. I was looking forward to reading how the author would have played the hands differently, but there's not much input except on the bidding. He really promotes conservative bidding. I found the book to be very basic, and though beginning and intermediate players would probably gain something from the book, I regretfully did not.