[fweng322]

Hi,


Today I played with my good friends. We've played together for 20 years, but we all are not professional even not good ones. We just love playing bridge.

In one of today's hands, my partner and I were defending a 3S. I got Q72 in my hearts. The dummy's heart was Jxxx. My partner played HA.

My question is that, at this condition, should I use card number signal (3 cards, play 2 first), or use welcome signal (play 7 first)?
At that hand, I played H2. Then my partner played HK and I followed H7. So he didn't play the third heart but switched to club. Finally the dealer discarded his last heart and made the 3S.

We discussed this hand. I think that the problem was that I wasn't sure if I should welcome heart at the first time. If I can be sure that HAK was at my partner's hand, I should welcome him with H7-H2. What do you think? Does it have a general rule to identify when to use welcome signal and when to use card number signal?

[Endymion77]

Once he leads the ace, you can be fairly certain that he has the K as well. Normally, an Ace lead asks for attitude (so you would play the 7) and a King lead asks for count (so you would play the 2). Against a suit contract, the signals change according to dummy though - it's common to show suit preference if dummy is short (singleton or void), and to always give count if dummy has length in the suit (usually 5+) regardless of your attitude.

[fweng322]

 Endymion77, on 2013-September-29, 05:16, said:

Once he leads the ace, you can be fairly certain that he has the K as well. Normally, an Ace lead asks for attitude (so you would play the 7) and a King lead asks for count (so you would play the 2). Against a suit contract, the signals change according to dummy though - it's common to show suit preference if dummy is short (singleton or void), and to always give count if dummy has length in the suit (usually 5+) regardless of your attitude.

But what if he got Ax only? He may lead A and then a small heart to mean doubleton and want to ruff.

[Endymion77]

Leading from Ax rarely works, and you can't really differentiate between Ax and AKx so there's nothing you can do but signal per your agreements.

[Free]

Against a suit contract I have the agreement that the Ace asks for attitude and the King for count. Even without this agreement, leading the Ace strongly suggests the King anyway, so I'd encourage. You can't cover for each situation, so take the most frequent one (partner has the K) and play accordingly.

[akwoo]

 fweng322, on 2013-September-29, 06:41, said:

But what if he got Ax only? He may lead A and then a small heart to mean doubleton and want to ruff.

If you or your partner regularly leads from Ax(xxx) rather than choosing a different suit, then you should agree to lead K from AKx(xx).

[Vampyr]

 akwoo, on 2013-September-29, 11:12, said:

If you or your partner regularly leads from Ax(xxx) rather than choosing a different suit, then you should agree to lead K from AKx(xx).

If you do this you will want to signal attitude on King leads.

In very general terms, it is popular to play attitude on partner's leads and count on declarer's.

[Fluffy]

When partner leads the ace he has the king 90 to 98% of the time depending on the player (assuming standard leads), so you should rather forget about other holdings.

The standard signal on first trick is attitude, which means play high (♥7) if you'd like the suit to be continued.

So your partner was right.

[Zelandakh]

As a general rule, you give signals in the order attitude->count->suit preference. If a signal does not make sense then you skip to the next one. So when your partner leads the ace, attitude does make sense so your first signal should be positive or negative. If Dummy had had something like ♥KQJ or a singleton with enough trumps, then attitude now makes less sense. Similarly, when Declarer leads a suit, experience has shown that giving an attitude signal is more likely to be helpful to her/him than to partner. Hence the common agreement to skip to count on Declarer's lead.

As has also been written, some pairs have special rules for Ace and King leads on the opening trick. Many in my homeland play an Ace lead as asking for an attitude signal and a King lead asking for a count signal. To call that Standard though is wrong. Leads vary greatly between regions and attitude on both Ace and King leads is also common. Even when playing attitude/count, it is not necessarily clear; while the more common approach is as above, I personally prefer Ace = count, King = attitude quite strongly when not playing Rusinow (second highest) leads. That is because the King lead can come from both AKxxx and KQx and attitude is much more useful on the latter holding.

There are other issues with these methods too and my advice is to completely forget about them until you have a partner who is interested in trying it out. In the meantime, just agree the basic: attitude->count->suit preference. That way you will nearly always know where you stand. You can always add some exceptions later on if you find special situations where you needed a different approach. I mentioned one such possibility already - partner leads an Ace and Dummy holds a singleton and enough trumps in the suit. One possible agreement is to skip directly to suit preference here. Perhaps you will find other "special" hands too but the basic method is actually good on the vast majority and certainly adequate for practically all players below expert level (imho).

[barmar]

 fweng322, on 2013-September-29, 06:41, said:

But what if he got Ax only? He may lead A and then a small heart to mean doubleton and want to ruff.

If that's what he did, then he's already blown up the suit, so your signal doesn't really matter all that much. He might as well continue, and maybe you can get in before declarer draws trumps and give him his ruff. It's only a mistake if there's some other switch that you really need him to make before letting declarer in.

And suppose you DO have the Kxx, so you could give him a ruff? If you give a count signal, he won't know what you want him to do.

You can't cater your signalling to both situations, you have to pick one method. As others have said, A is usually from AKx (unless you have an agreement to always lead K from this holding), so you should signal on that assumption.

[fweng322]

Thank you all for your discussion and suggestion!

I know what "attitude" and "count" signal means, but I've never been really clear when to use which. Your replies make me clear a lot.

Does the "suit" signal mean which suit you want your partner to switch? Small number means lower suit (exclude the suit you discard), right?

[Vampyr]

 fweng322, on 2013-September-30, 17:47, said:

Does the "suit" signal mean which suit you want your partner to switch? Small number means lower suit (exclude the suit you discard), right?

Yes. You can use suit preference when following suit, too, not just when discarding. A very common use of a suit preference signal is when leading a card for partner to ruff.

[ggwhiz]

We have a VERY good local player that insists every card is a count signal. She's a retired auditor and I call them accounting signals.... with an audit trail.

She's very easy to declare against if you know this (but wins anyway) and you have some excellent advice above on how and when to mix it up. I learned on the theory that partner signaled what I needed to know and we had a gentle partnership discussion when it didn't happen and improved as we went along.

Today I play Ace for attitude King for count with the exceptions to give suit preference as above. Slowly the oddball situations come to mind such as when partner owned a 1♥ opener showing 5 and I raised showing 3. The K♥ opening lead asks for count but dummy hits with 4 of them. Hmm declarer only has one so I'll give suit preference.

Takes practice and a highly recommended partnership discussion over the ones that get away.

[jdeegan]

The answer is very simple. You normally give attitude. You give count only when partner needs it. Once in a while, you will find the opportunity to give a suit preference signal.

That said, there are a few conventions like the Smith echo some (but nowhere nearly all) expert players use. Also, most play that the opening lead of an ace against a no trump contract demands you play an honor if you have one, otherwise show count.

Lots of seemingly ingenious signals have been devised over the years (e.g. odd/even discards), but most have been abandoned except for very specialized situations. It's mostly regular or UDCA these days.