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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth it, December 18, 1999
By A Customer
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.
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by Joseph Andrews
by JohnGalt Strichman
