In 1994 the membership of the American Contract Bridge League voted S. J. Simon’s 1946 classic, Why You Lose at Bridge, the best bridge book ever. To that extent, all bridge books live in its considerable shadow. According to Simon you lose at bridge for two reasons: lack of skill and losing tactics. He doesn’t plan to do much about the first. ‘You’ve been making the same mistakes for years and you have every intention of going on making them.’ But he thinks he can, perhaps, help with the second. You lose, he says, not because you can’t play difficult hands (of which there are in any case relatively few) but because you make a mess of the many simple ones that come your way. And so Simon’s aim is not to increase your technical skill, but to help you make the most of what (little) you already have.
Andrew Robson is an altogether nicer person. He believes he can do both. I met him once and, by way of conversation, suggested I would like to be a world-class player within a year. I mean, I’m a reasonably intelligent person, and how hard can it be? Robson paused for a moment (he is well known in tournament bridge for the length and intensity of his ‘trancing’) and then suggested that perhaps it would take me three.
Which was both endearing and highly optimistic. Neither he nor I had any reason to believe a lifetime would make me a world class player, or even a moderately good player. But readers familiar with the missionary zeal with which Robson approaches his daily columns in the Times will know that he believes that things can only get better.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in