This book of problems in defensive card-play selects all its deals from real events. What makes it unique as a problem book is that you're not up against a declarer who will always play perfectly. Sometimes the problem allows you to take advantage of declarer's mistakes. As the title implies, defeating the contract is the emphasis throughout the book. You are playing teams, not match-points, and the number of under-tricks or over-tricks is irrelevant. You are encouraged to seek out the critical fourth trick against a major-suit game, the fifth against 3NT, and so on.

Ian McCance is Australia's ninth leading all-time master point holder. A winner of several national championships spanning a period of 51 years at the top, he has also represented his country at the world level. In collaboration with Robert Smart,he devised Specific Trump Cue-bids, described in 'The Bridge World' in 1981. Now retired, he writes a weekly newspaper column on bridge.