Focus on Hocus-Pocus

By Erwin Brecher & Danny Roth

Panacea Press 2004, £11.95, soft 200pp.

This is an unusual book, as it includes both chess and bridge problems. There are 100 of each, the right hand page sets the scene, and then you turn the page for the solution. I must emphasize that the chess positions come from real games, and are not artificial “problems”. Presumably the bridge problems are the same, certainly they feature fairly normal distributions. A lot of chess players either play bridge competitively or socially, so this book should reach a wide audience. I found the book very interesting, and the puzzles are excellent. There is a good mix of difficulty in the chess positions, and some of them are really fascinating. It is not easy to comment on the difficulty of the bridge as I am fairly inept at that game, but I did learn something! An advantage of the layout is that the reader could easily use the book on a flight or train journey.

This book provides an unusual concept, and I really enjoyed it.

Contact details -Panacea Press Ltd.         tel:       020 7722 8464
             86 North Gate      fax:       020 7586 8187
             Prince Albert Road e mail:    ebrecher@panaceapress.net
             LONDON             website:   www.panaceapress.net
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             United Kingdom

Kevin Thurlow