In article ,
Nick Wedd writes:
I think there's a point that you are missing. Almost everything I can
read in a 50-year-old chess book is still true, and I can improve my
chess by reading it. Maybe a few of the lines it recommends have been
refuted; but even this won't matter if my opponent does not know the
refutation.

However, bridge is about communication. The way bridge players
communicate has changed a lot in the last fifty years. Even where we
still play four-card majors, we make (for instance) take-out doubles
more freely than formerly. If I read a bridge book that is more than
30 years old, much of what I learn about bidding and about what I can
infer from bids will be inappropriate to modern styles, and if I
remember what I read, it will make my game worse.

Also bridge is a *much* younger game than chess, and is therefore
probably evolving more rapidly than is chess. So books on bridge become
out of date more quickly. If bridge ever becomes as old a game as chess
is now, no doubt it will by then be changing much more slowly than it
has done over the last fifty years.
--
John Hall
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts;
but if he will be content to begin with doubts,
he shall end in certainties." Francis Bacon (1561-1626)