[Gerben42]

Rusinov leads against trumps:

A asks special signal.
K from AKx..., KQ doubleton or Kx
Q from KQx..., QJ doubleton or Qx
etc.

Love it or hate it? Why?

[david_c]

We tried this for a while but gave it up. There are a few situations where you definitely don't want to play it, the main one being partner's suit. Remembering these exceptions can be a problem, and defining exactly what is meant by partner's suit is not as easy as you might think. And we seemed to be gaining no obvious advantage from the method in other situations, so it didn't seem worthwhile at all.

[luke warm]

i like them when coupled with journalist leads, because together they seem to clear up many hands... but falsecarding should be a part of it, because often declarer can tell as much as partner

[Double !]

I do not like lower of touching honor leads because
1) I always forget that I'm supposed to be playing them
2) I very much like to lead coded 9s and 10s (lead of 9 or 10 shows 0 or 2 higher in suit, lead of jack denies). I can't play coded 9s & 10s together because the results is that the lead of the jack then has two conflicting meanings.

So, I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-Am

DHL

[fred]

I think Rusinow against notrump is clearly superior to "standard".

I tried Rusinow against suits once. During that session, my partner led a singleton Queen and I had no idea that I needed to win my Ace and give him a ruff (since he might have been leading the Q from a KQ combination).

Of course this does not prove that Rusinow against suits is inferior to standard, but it was enough to convince me that I did not want to play this method.

Probably Rusinow against suits from known long suits is a good thing.

What is interesting (to me at least) is that I have encountered some A1 pairs who use Rusinow against suits but not against notrump.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[whereagles]

Yeah, the thing with Rusinow is it complicates pard's task when you lead a singleton or doubleton honor. But those leads are quite rare, so I don't think that's such a strong thing against Rusinow.

[Free]

Leading from singleton or honour-small is rare?? Doesn't your partner ever intervene in the suit where you're short?

[Gerben42]

The idea is that Rusinow is OFF when you lead in partner's suit. Of course you have to remember all this but luckily being on lead is something that comes up frequently

[akhare]

fred, on Apr 30 2006, 10:33 AM, said:

I think Rusinow against notrump is clearly superior to "standard".

On a related noted, here's a post by Adam Beneschan on rgb:


Woolsey wrote an article on these leads in the March/April 1989 issue
of _Bridge Today_. He made no mention of Vinge (sp? I thought it was
Vinje) in the article, so either he hit on the idea independently or
plagiarized Vinje's idea without attribution.

I just happened to have a copy of the article in the trunk of my car
when this thread popped up. Really!

Since I have the article right in front of me, I might as well
summarize the method (it applies against notrump only):

A from A-K, but not a solid holding; partner usually gives attitude
K solid holding, asks for count or unblock
Q from K-Q, but not a solid holding; partner encourages with A or J
but does not overtake or unblock
J from Q-J; partner gives attitude
10 from J-10, may be interior sequence
9 from 10-9, may be interior sequence
8 from 9-8 or top or second highes from nothing

The following exceptions are recommended by Woolsey:

From AQJ9x, lead Q. If partner has K or if declarer wins the K, partner
will know what you are doing.
From AKQx, it's probably best to lead Q; partner will encourage holding
the J.
From AQ109x, lead 10 instead of 9. If partner has J or declarer wins
J, partner will know what's going on; if partner has K, he/she
will automatically overtake and return the suit anyway.

(By the way, I've only used them twice, so I can't say anything about
whether they work well or not.)

-- Adam

[MickyB]

For a little while I played something along the lines of Rusinow, but from an interior sequence we would make the normal lead - i.e. an honour lead promised one higher honour. I quite liked it - any thoughts on how this compares to the method described in the rest of this thread?

[luke warm]

that's more along the lines of journalist leads, i think

[sfbp]

The Vinje Notrump leads are very effective for many of the reasons outlined above. I learned to use them in suits too (hence Fred's comment doesn't surprise me). The methods below have evolved somewhat since as we suffered.

They apply only to opening leads, and clearly when you lead pd's suit you need some rules - the highest isn't necessarily correct all the time.

A from AKx denying Q, J, or doubleton. Of course if pard has K and you led this A "on spec" then he needs to abandon caution and throw the highest honour that he can spare.

K from AKJ(x),KQT(x), or any doubleton (not to mention singleton)
Against NT this requires special handling - if dummy has exactly xxx and partner has Jxx or Qxx, he must unblock NOW. Of course the unblock is routine with Qx and Jx, and unneeded with Qxxx and Jxxx.

Q from AKQx, KQx, QJTx and QJ9x
(notes:
1. this KQx lead works well for short suits and against NT - for long suits against Suit eg KQxxx or more, it is better to "lie" and lead the K for all the reasons noted higher up the thread - partner can nearly always see enough of the suit that he knows you don't have the 3rd card in the broken sequence. Avoid KQxx whenever possible.
2. When leading AKQ(x) you continue with the K(odd card) if you had an odd number of cards in the suit originally, and the A when you held an even number of cards.
3. If you have to lead QJxx without either 10 or 9, lead a high card at random
)

J,10 and 9 denote either:

a. nothing higher (with 10 and 9 usually top of a sequence since I like to play std count, and therefore with 963 will lead the 3 - however "never" underlead J) or
b. 2 higher INCLUDING the next touching card.
(Notes:
1. The sequence KQJ is handled like AKQ, with the K on the second round denoting an ODD number of cards originally, and the Q an even number.
2. There's no need to lead Q from AQJ (woolsey)- it's clear for the same reason that Q from AKQ is clear, but we dont want partner to think we have the Ace when we do not.
)

Generally partner signals the same way to most of these - count if dummy has 3, or more in the suit led, attitude if dummy has 2 or less, suit preference when declarer is certain to take the SECOND trick.

I guess there's a limit to how much more I want to give away but one motivation for posting this is that I would like to develop partners who will work at this lot with me.

In effect the reason this works well is, this takes the pressure of the lead of the King, and enables the partnership to get count in many situations where everyone else is still using attitude - because we already know the exact holding partner led from most of the time.

And one more thing: (this needs a separate thread) do you lead the A of partner's suit, and does it work, and under what circumstances?

Cheers

Stephen

[Miron]

I play Vinje leads. I was never sure how it is close with Rusinov.

Against Suit:
A =AK even count (+special signaling)
K =AK odd count (+special signaling)
Q =KQx or QJ, Qx
J =QJx or J10, Jx
10 =J10x or 109, 10x or third highest
9 =109x or 98, 9x or third highest
some play also: 8 98x, 87, 8x
3/5

Against NT:
A =AKxx+, AKx
K =AKJ+, KQ10+ asking for honor drop
Q-9 =0 or 2 higher with exception HHx (the middle card is better)
4th

I'm very happy with this. It is not completly suitable for other then the opening lead (I play it only for opening lead). There can be some situations when the lead during game can be the same (partner leads obvious AK etc.).

[cherdano]

With Han I play Rusinow with A asking for attitude and K asking count (resp. unblock or count at NT) -- I really like this part a lot.

We play this with 2/4 spotcard leads and top from interior sequences, so when we lead a highish card we always have exactly one higher card. I think this combines well. The spotcard leads work sometimes better and sometimes worse than standard 3/5 leads...

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