Expert Bridge Simplified

Corrections and Supplemental Material

page 73: An undiscussed advantage to starting diamonds early is that if that suit breaks badly, declarer will sometimes have a chance to play East for king-queen of spades. (Keeping this string in declarer's bow is negative for overtricks.)

page 77: The solution to Problem 2 should have stated explicitly that the simplifying assumptions were made only to provide a workable context to compare the two approaches discussed in detail. Indeed, if one takes those assumptions--that East has exactly seven spades and no void--as given, declarer can assure the contract by following the approach in the last paragraph: Discard a spade from dummy on the third round of clubs and lead a fourth round. West must make two discards before dummy's second discard. If West has thrown a diamond, declarer can work on diamonds. If West has thrown two hearts, declarer can work on hearts. If West has thrown a spade (and a heart), declarer, now with a spade menace against East, can discard a diamond from dummy, ruff a heart, and finish trumps to produce a double squeeze.

pages 124 and 129: The last paragraph of the solution to Problem 2 does not take fully into account declarer's chances should he play a second high heart and find East with an original holding of three to the queen. By then continuing with three rounds of spades and a diamond finesse (with variations in extreme layouts), declarer's chance of success by leading a second high heart is around 79 percent.

page 146: The solution to Problem 8 makes the tacit assumption that West will always capture the queen of spades when he can. It is possible that West might find a duck from king-low (or even from king-jack).

page 151: In Problem 4, if trumps break two-zero, declarer should not draw the second round immediately (because he may need a closed-hand trump reentry later) and therefore should also draw the first round of trumps from the appropriate hand.

page 175: The (already relatively complicated) "neighbor shortcut" can be extended: If the opponents hold T (fewer than 13) cards in a suit, the ratio of the chance that a particular opponent holds a specific x cards in the suit to a specific x plus 1 cards in the suit is: (14 - T + x) / (13 - x).

page 214: In Problem 2, "(All Pass)" should be "Pass"

pages 321 and 326: In Problem 4, remove North's four of clubs.

page 328: In Solution 5b, after jack-king-ace, low-eight|seven-nine-ten, declarer's best play on the third round is to finesse the six.

page 343: In the last paragraph, in two places, "four" should be "deuce"

page 344: In the solution to Problem 8, Line One also has a chance when East has three diamonds. Declarer can play East for 3=3=3=4 and the king of spades.

page 380: In clubs, West would presumably always play the jack from king-jack or jack singleton. If East wanted to influence declarer's thinking about the club lie, he would not have a free choice between the king and queen (unless declarer believed that West would always play the jack from queen-jack).

pages 399 and 403: In Problem 1, the analysis shows that a spade lead is more likely to gain a spade trick is more likely than a club lead is to gain a club trick. Taking into account the chances of avoiding an extra loser in each suit without the benefit of a lead from dummy shows that the overall probabilities of success of the two lines are close to equal.

Expert Bridge Simplified is the best-selling book by Jeff Rubens, published by The Bridge World. This page includes corrections and supplemental material to the book.