As absolutely chaotic as the past few days, weeks and months have been, I’ve had some time to do more reading than usual as I commute from one point to the next.

Some of the non-bridge books I’ve revisited over the past while have included ones like Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the wonderful Tao of Pooh and a few MIllion-Dollar-Man episodic books. I’ve also delved back into my bridge library – and one that stands out is Bridge for Dummies by Eddie Kantar.

What Makes it Great

If someone called me up at three or four in the morning and asked me to recommend a bridge book, I’d say Bridge for Dummies every time. I suppose I’d say the same thing if you called at a reasonable hour for the same question.

Everyone who has ever read any book out of the For Dummies series will know that it has a very specific and characteristic format. It’s part of what makes the series useful for anyone who wants a good starting reference book on almost any topic.

But in spite of this, Kantar manages to shine through.

The book has all the clear style marks of being from For Dummies, but also carries all the quirkiness of Kantar at the same time.

By the end of the book, you’ll know the basics of bridge – and you’ll know a little bit more about the world of bridge, too.

Bridge for Dummies contains more than a handful of great quotes between what it says about everything else, much like other books like the Bible or I-Ching.

Here are the ones that stood out most (and of course, from here on in for this piece, the words are quoted from Kantar…)

Quotes by Kantar

(C) Wiley Publishing

• Each bridge hand consists of exactly 13 tricks; the minimum opening bid must be for at least seven of those 13 tricks. Therefore, each bid has an automatic six tricks built into it; thus, a 1 bid actually says that you think you can take seven tricks, not one trick. In other words, your bridge elevator starts on the seventh floor.

• If you’re sitting at a blackjack table in Las Vegas, you’re a goner if someone catches you counting cards. However, if you’re at a bridge table and you don’t count cards, you’re one dead duck.

• After her cards are on the table, the dummy shouldn’t contribute anything else to the hand — except good dummy etiquette.

• Play the high honor cards from the short side first.

• Don’t fear giving up the lead. Your high honor cards in the other suits protect you by allowing you to eventually regain the lead and pursue your goal of establishing tricks.

• A word to the wise: Nothing good can happen to you if you take sure tricks before establishing extra needed tricks.

• When you know you have to lose at least one trick in a suit that includes the ace and king, face the inevitable, and lose that trick early by playing low cards from both your hand and the dummy. Taking this dive early on is called ducking a trick.

• Don’t take any unnecessary risks, such as an unnecessary finesse, unless you need to do so to make your contract.

• For you and your partner to land in a safe trump-suit contract, you want to have at least eight cards in the same suit between the two hands, called an eight-card trump fit.

• Remember to keep all your bids at the same decibel level.