Talk:Victor Mollo

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

I've just bought The Hog Takes to Precision, and I was pleased to see that quite a bit of the Introduction is lifted from our Wikipedia article. :) JH (talk page) 08:52, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Books

Section 3 Victor Mollo#Books (formerly 2.2 Other [publications]):

Relying on WorldCat and LCCat, often naively, I added listings for titles that were missing here; added dates to all listings that remain; sometimes added other data. "Often naively" refers partly to taking dates from Mollo's top page at WorldCat, where a first publication date is likely to be wrong if one WorldCat library catalogues the book too-early. It refers also to adding titles without careful check whether they are US titles only; I caught some such variant titles but probably missed some.

I deleted four listings, the last of which is much expanded here:

• Not found

1. Bridge Psychology
2. Bridge Philosophy

• Found in WorldCat, not credited to Mollo

1. The Complete Bridge Player
2. Play Bridge with the Experts, Mollo and Derek Rimington (Robert Hale, 1991); orig. Learn Bridge ... (1981) OCLC 22860803

The longer, all-chronological list of Books now incorporates the Menagerie series #1-5, whose {{cite book}} listings remain in place above, section 2 Victor Mollo#Menagerie series (formerly 2.1 Menagerie series, under 2 Publications).

2.2 Other [publications] did and 3 Books does list only books, no shorter works, so the new heading is appropriate.

--P64 (talk) 22:42, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps Mollo did a revised/updated edition of someone's classic Complete Bridge Player --as he did with Culbertson's Contract Bridge for Everyone (Faber, 1969); details now in Books and Notes.

--P64 (talk) 23:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I read a friend's copy of Bridge Psychology, so I know that the book exists. I think that The Finer Arts of Bridge: a textbook of psychology (Faber, 1978) was a revised edition. I've found details of the original on Amazon UK: Bridge psychology; or, Reading between the cards, Hardcover: 127 pages, Publisher: Duckworth (1958), Language: English, ASIN: B0000CK2IQ. I'll add it back in. (The eccentric capitalisation and punctuation of the title are how it's listed on Amazon.) There's no sign of Bridge Philosophy, though. JH (talk page) 09:13, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Agree with removal of Bridge Philosophy and Play Bridge with the Experts from the listings. Agree with Jhall1 with reinstatement of Bridge Psychology. These three are consistent with what is listed and not listed in Bridge Books in English 1886 - 2010, by Tim Bourke and John Sugden (2010). In addition The Compleat Bridge Player should be reinstated with the corrected spelling - and yes, it is spelled 'Compleat'. I will do so after this posting. Will investigate remainder of listing at a later date. Newwhist (talk) 11:44, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The 1st-ed. subtitle enables finding Bridge Psychology at WorldCat. OCLC 5331015 (Quoting the short title also brings the book to the first page of the search report, I find now, as the mere match with first two words of the title does not!)

Search 'compleat bridge player' brings that book to the top, quotation not necessary. OCLC 59193101 (The spelling is no surprise, mimicking The Compleat Angler.)

I don't feel strongly about including either page-counts or WorldCat links, {{OCLC}}. They are previously common in listings of bridge books and I do commonly add them both when I visit a WorldCat record for another reason. Thus I added a few last hour --not including those two reported here now.

--P64 (talk) 17:25, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

The short(est) cut to expert play

Did Mollo and his publishers use subtitles "the shortest cut to expert play" and "the short cut to expert play" successively, for distinct content? I doubt it. Rather I infer How Good is Your Bridge? (1969) is the US ed. of [Victor Mollo's] Winning Double (1968). These two are both in the Library of Congress Catalog/ue, or LCCat, which gives identical 149-page count and gives 1968 copyright date for the former.

• 1969 US LCCN 68-59631 --subject heading LCSH "bridge whist" is inept
• 1968 UK LCCN 76-370342

By the way, those LCCN show these two records were created in 1968 and 1976. LC acquired Victor Mollo's Winning Double, or found some other reason to catalogue it, only eight years later.

By that time another ed. had been catalogued --"New and enlarged", so we should mention it.

• 1973 UK LCCN 74-192879, 162 pp.

--P64 (talk) 18:35, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

1100 quizzes

Is that a typo for "100 quizzes"? LCCN 80-670033 (Two WorldCat records give "1100" but one should be the LC record and the other may not be independent.[1]) Or does that mean 1100 single exercises in British English? --P64 (talk) 18:41, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

It looks as if it really is 1100, as a websearch showed that the US Amazon and the booksellers Waterstones both list it as that (probably other places as well, but I didn't bother to look any further). JH (talk page) 20:06, 23 June 2014 (UTC)