Spotlight on Card Play

This book is designed to turn moderately good bridge players into expert players of the cards, by use of novel and entertaining methods. Spotlight on Card Play can be read just for pleasure; for the many hands in it exemplify what Dr. Paul Stern described as Darvas’s ‘extra-ordinary gift for discovering unusual features of bridge hands - the beautiful, the queer, the exciting, and even the comical.’ Though these hands are again all that, they are this time also turned to the intensely practical purpose of making the reader a better player of the cards. The Hungarian authors - the late Robert Darvas and his close friend over the years, Paul Lukacs - were long ago ranked among the finest, most original card analysts Europe has produced. By means of a lively question-and-answer method they demonstrate most tellingly the way the expert mind tackles the playing of all manner of hands, directing hidden snags in some that look simple and finding solutions to others that are packed with difficulties and obstacles. Norman Hart’s sole aim has been to make the book acceptable to English-speaking readers while faithfully interpreting the intentions of his Hungarian authors. Darvas and Lukacs, in fact, show as in a revealing spotlight the expert’s psychological tricks of the trade and explain, without explaining away, his seemingly uncanny insight in finding the right technical device to use on each occasion. The reader who co-operates with the authors in the playing of these 67 hands can hardly fail to find life at once fuller and easier next time he sits down at a bridge table.