[inquiry]

Wyman suggested a new thread where we discuss the advantage of standard versus upside down remaining count. I think there are many discussions that can be had beyond that with signaling. Like is count or attitude the best default signal to trick one, udca in general versus standard, the advantages of vinjie signals, Etc. I thought it might be nice to start a series of threads where YOU have to give signals to your partner to direct the defense properly, regardless of the signal methods you use. Some will be simple, like no matter what your original agreement to trick one signals might be, conditions associated with opening lead and what is in dummy that would make you change from your normal method to some alternative signal, and what alternative now become clear.

Here is an interesting one to start off with. The carding shown is that which occurred at the table, Feel free to suggest alternative carding at any point in the hand (from your hand).

You know this opponent would open 1♣ with all balanced hands even if holding 4♦ and 2♣ or 3=3 or 4♣ and 2♦. We can assume that the spade 4 was attitude or count.

Would the heart two be count, S/P, or something else for you? Would you have played a different heart, if so why?

We can assume that the spade 5 was a lot of things, remaining count, original count, S/P, other? Would you play a different spade.

On the fourth heart, what do you discard and why? What problem does your partner face and can you help him? Feel free to discuss the cards you would have played to the first six tricks in the context of a partnership defense.

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[manudude03]

Partner needs to be aware to hold onto clubs with xxx Axx Jxx Txxx or similar. I play a suit preference ♠J to tell him I have diamonds controlled. On the remaining heart, I throw the ♠9 to reinforce it . Hopefully partner can work out that I can't afford to play any minor suit cards.

[JLOGIC]

Cool Ben tricked you all, declarer is just on a 2 way diamond guess for the contract, thanks for all the helpful signals

[Phil]

@ManU - Partner pitched on the 3rd heart so declarer looks like 2=4=4=3 or 2=4=3=4. We have seen ♠K, and can infer the ♣AQ + ♦A. If declarer has AQJx of clubs, there would have been a claim already.

If declarer has 2443, partner can throw a club from his 3235 and not feel any pain.

With KT xxxx Axx AQxx (and partner 8xx Ax Jxxx Txxx), partner shouldn't have a problem either. I would need specifically J9xxx xxx xx QJx for a club pitch to be right.

Anyway, since this is about helping partner, I can send a very clear message that "I have something in diamonds" by playing the 8-5-2 of hearts in that order. There isn't any need for count, and partner can count the hand as soon as I discard. The ♠J would be redundant, but late in a match I will sometimes do this when sleepy doesn't notice my heart pips.

Whether or not I should be so forthright and honest is another matter.

[JLOGIC]

Bleh, sorry I wrote a super long post about this but I really don't want to discuss my thoughts on situations like this in public.

Let me just say that I find situatiosn like this to be extremely fascinating. It is easy to come up with an overall strategy for a situation like this, but unlike poker you are unlikely to see this kind of situation many times vs the same opp, so it's best to make a possibly unablanced strategy for situations like this that exploit the opponents. Of course, you wanna be mindful of messing up partner.

[gnasher]

Phil, on 2011-September-22, 14:29, said:

If declarer has 2443, partner can throw a club from his 3235 and not feel any pain.

Partner has to make two minor-suit discards - declarer will cash the spade next.

[BunnyGo]

JLOGIC, on 2011-September-22, 15:26, said:

Bleh, sorry I wrote a super long post about this but I really don't want to discuss my thoughts on situations like this in public.

Let me just say that I find situatiosn like this to be extremely fascinating. It is easy to come up with an overall strategy for a situation like this, but unlike poker you are unlikely to see this kind of situation many times vs the same opp, so it's best to make a possibly unablanced strategy for situations like this that exploit the opponents. Of course, you wanna be mindful of messing up partner.

Do i detect a blog post in the making?

[JLOGIC]

BunnyGo, on 2011-September-22, 16:57, said:

Do i detect a blog post in the making?

no that would be like a blog post about your exact range and thought process for when you bluff check-raise the river

[JLOGIC]

On that note to make an hrothgar like post, I always wondered what would happen if you asked a very experience top partnership what %age of the time they thought their partner falsecards in a certain %age, or what their partners style is on falsecarding. Maybe as simple as you have AQJxxxx opp xxxx and you lead up to dummy and have to guess the suit, how often to they play the highest spot from 2 small lol. I mean I know you'd get laughed at but surely some partnerships have a reasonable idea of the answer to this.

[Zelandakh]

A slam hand is probably not the best to choose for this kind of thread since it is often best not to signal truthfully since declarer tends to have more decisions to make than partner. As for the signals (if honest) the first spade would be attitude, the first heart count, the second spade remaining count, the 2nd heart suit preference. I am not sure why you left out the last signal in your initial write-up. Partner's problem looks to be which minor suit length to keep. This seems like a possible situation to use Ben's nifty "count in another suit" gadget, for example if the spade I discard now were to give count in diamonds, but I do not play with anyone who would understand this.

[gnasher]

I think I've already made a mess of it, by giving four suit-preference signals for clubs (♠4, ♥2, ♠5 and ♥3). Partner, having seen the first two of these, then gave suit-preference for diamonds (♠8). This confirmed that he's going to keep three diamonds. If he has something like xxx Ax Jxxx 10xxx, he will play me for Jxxxx xxx Qx QJx.

My best chance to tell him that I've mis-signalled is by throwing a club now. Whilst that gives away the suit opposite 10xxx, Declarer will find it hard to get it right.

If we have 3-3 diamonds but not QJx-xxx, one of us has to keep three, and it's OK for declarer to know who has kept three. The key is not to tell him where the honours are. What I would like to have done is to show mild suit preference for diamonds. That wouldn't guarantee ♦Q, but would say that I have three of them and suggest that I should be keeping them. Partner could then agree with me by playing ♠2, or overrule me by playing ♠8. On this deal, he'll certainly agree to keep clubs, because I can't be 3-3 in the minors.

This approach isn't perfect, because on another deal we might help declarer to pick up ♣Jxxx. On this particular deal, however, I'm very happy for declarer to know that clubs are 4=2.

[Fluffy]

I apply my standard methods to this:

Trick 1 (spades): Attitude, (discouraging)
Trick 2 (hearts): smith Echo (count if my card was clear enough previous trick)
Trick 3 (spades): count in spades
Trick 4 (hearts): suit preference, even if count wasn't givem, since it looks like count will be known cos the suit is gonna be run.


Now to the hand: Partner doesn't have room for ♣Q on the bidding, but he does for ♦J, in that case we want partner to keep 2 diamonds to the jack and 4 clubs to the 10 then.

However the bidding looks more like declarer is 3433, and we shouldn't give any suit preference at all, or give it for clubs, partner can discard as many clubs as he wants, the more he discards the more it looks like he is guarding something in diamonds.

[dake50]

To get the dis-agreers going, my 1980 partnership
agreed a one winner or no winner hand lies/truths randomly.
Whereas a maybe second winner signals by our agreement.
Thus declarer wasn't always clued in.

Does any one use a parity signal? This seems to have fallen
away. My 1980 partner liked parity. Often the opening lead count
plus parity lit up declarer's shape by trick three.
Defense became easy for both partners.

[inquiry]

dake50, on 2011-September-23, 09:42, said:

To get the dis-agreers going, my 1980 partnership
agreed a one winner or no winner hand lies/truths randomly.
Whereas a maybe second winner signals by our agreement.
Thus declarer wasn't always clued in.

Does any one use a parity signal? This seems to have fallen
away. My 1980 partner liked parity. Often the opening lead count
plus parity lit up declarer's shape by trick three.
Defense became easy for both partners.

Actually, Vinje's parity signal is not all that useful on this auction BECAUSE of lack of knowledge about the minimum length of the club suit. if 1♣ had promised 3+ clubs, for instance, partner would be better placed to analyze a parity signal in proper context (how many clubs does declarer hold is key here). But great for bringing this up. i was also wondering if anyone would discuss substitute (or surrogate) count possibilities.

I am happy with the fact that the last few posters have begun discussing what they would have played at trick one, trick two etc, that is what I wanted. For instance, like fluffy, i would use attitude at trick one, but unlike him, I would Encourage in spades. It would be interesting to see such differences of opinions on trick one (throw in count as well), and how it would alter subsequent carding. I was particularly interested in different signal opportunities in the play of hearts. And if anyone could solve the signal or don't signal the diamond holding and how blatant to be about the signal if you did. There is also room for possible use of Foster echo (yuk to me), smith echo, and perhaps other methods as well. That is why I invited people to change played cards started at trick one... and explain their methods.

[mikeh]

I read manfield's classic BW article about the idle 5th many years ago, and recognize that the often reflexive first discard from a 5 card suit, when declarer is known not to have 5+ length, can be fatal to the defence, but this seems to me to be a clear situation in which partner ought to pitch a club from 10xxxx on the 3rd round of hearts, and that his failure to do so makes declarer with 2=4=3=4 shape, partner being 3=2=4=4.

I would have encouraged spades at trick one, given count in hearts at tricks 2 and 4, and remaining count in spades trick 3. I enjoy playing against count givers a great deal, but I think on a hand like this, where the opps have had an uninformative auction and have power, it behooves the defenders to clarify shape (of declarer) asap.

By the time I have to make my first pitch, we need to make sure partner protects clubs.

I think that we have to signal that we have nothing in clubs and the way to do that, it seems to me, is to play the spade 9 on the 4th heart.

I am probably getting too subtle here.....we're not trying to say we have diamonds controlled....why would we give away the diamond Q? Why would declarer think we were? We are, instead, warning partner that his club length is more important than his diamond length.

[mikeh]

inquiry, on 2011-September-23, 12:24, said:

Actually, Vinje's parity signal is not all that useful on this auction BECAUSE of lack of knowledge about the minimum length of the club suit. if 1♣ had promised 3+ clubs, for instance, partner would be better placed to analyze a parity signal in proper context (how many clubs does declarer hold is key here). But great for bringing this up. i was also wondering if anyone would discuss substitute (or surrogate) count possibilities.

isn't the 1♣ opener dummy? Maybe I don't understand the issue, but there's no confusion about the length of clubs in opener's hand

[inquiry]

mikeh, on 2011-September-23, 16:30, said:

isn't the 1♣ opener dummy? Maybe I don't understand the issue, but there's no confusion about the length of clubs in opener's hand

In the words of Homer Simpson... Doh!!!!

But thanks for the reply before this, this is exactly the type of discussion i was looking for. It is interesting that you and I encourage in spades, and fluffy discourages. I was hoping to have discussion or at least point out, different choices people make.

[mikeh]

inquiry, on 2011-September-23, 12:24, said:

There is also room for possible use of Foster echo (yuk to me), smith echo, and perhaps other methods as well. That is why I invited people to change played cards started at trick one... and explain their methods.

For anyone who doesn't know the Foster Echo, it was invented by arguably the most successful whist and then auction bridge writer and player of his time, who was still active (just) when contract was invented. He claimed to have discovered the rule of 11, for example. The Foster echo works like this: when 3rd hand can't beat the card played from dummy, he plays his second highest card in the suit. This seems to have limited practical value and I haven't seen it played in more then 30 years, and even then only by one old-time player.

As for Smith, if your first card in spades is attitude, as it would be for me on this hand, then smith is no longer in play....and since the lead was marked as from xx(x), it was never in play for partner either.

[cloa513]

Definitely the hand for PRISM

[Fluffy]

inquiry, on 2011-September-23, 16:42, said:

But thanks for the reply before this, this is exactly the type of discussion i was looking for. It is interesting that you and I encourage in spades, and fluffy discourages. I was hoping to have discussion or at least point out, different choices people make.

Since partner plays another spade no matter waht I didn't give it a big thought actually, so perhaps its wrong to discourage.

A point worth discussing (perhaps on another thread) is if you think attitude signals "show cards" or "demand the play (or not) of a suit". This is often the same, but not exactly.

I think most experts play that attitude signals show (or deny) cards, while lavinthal and SP ask for suits to be played. Even though everyone realices that playing one method or the other, you have to sometimes lie to get your desired result.



An example where it matters could be when dummy has KQJx(x) of a suit, discading an encouraging card on that suit will show the ace for some, letting partner know that there is another tempo before it is run. But for others it will ask partner to play that suit, and since it is obvious that this is not a suit to be played, it asks partner not to rely on partner's honnors on the obvious switch since he doesn't help there.