[mike777]

kgr, on Jan 4 2007, 07:20 PM, said:

I started to play obvious shift a couple of weeks ago.
Certainly now we loose playing this method:
- mistakes (eg. forgetting that suit bid by declarer can not be OS, suit bid by defence is OS...)
- And more important!: It is a much more difficult signalling method then eg simple encourage/discurage. You should clearly remember the rules you agreed, even if the dummy would intuitively propose another suit as OS. I feel that the energie I have to spend for this is lost to count the hand and do other necessary thinking...
...I don't expect to get any advantage from OS during the first couple of months. (I'm even not sure my bridge is good enough to play it all).

(playing OS now makes me remember a post of Fred concerning weak NT, explaining he didn't play it because the related consequences asked too much energie he preferred to spend on other things).

A couple of tips that I hope as you learn "os" will help:
1) Keep in mind if not playing a forced card then high says continue, low says shift at trick one 99.9+%
2) In suit contract think partner bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies weakest 3 card side suit almost always.
3) In NT contract think partners bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies shortest suit, very often.
4) think suit pref in trump suit and starting at trick two very often....
5) think count is very very rare...most common is when in a hold up situation to help out partner.

If you are used to o/e as first discard it can be played along with "os"

Good luck.

[jmc]

I have heard that it is common in Italy for people to play odd/ even cards when partner leads to encourage or suggest side suits. Many play odd/even on the first discard in the US this way. I am pretty certain this is illegal on the GCC, however, to play odd/even not as a discard but on partner's lead. What do you all think?

The GCC carding section reads:

Dual-message carding strategies are not approved except on each
defender’s first discard. Except for the first discard only right-side-up or
upside-down card ordering strategies are approved. Encrypted signals are
not approved. In addition, a pair may be prohibited from playing any method
(such as suit preference systems at trick one), when they are deemed to be
playing it in a manner which is not compatible with the maintenance of proper
tempo (much like dual message signals).

jmc

[keylime]

Adam,

Larry and I play O/S over suits, but NOT over NT. We haven't had many troubles with this arrangement and it's clearer to our mindset.

[kgr]

mike777, on Jan 5 2007, 02:51 AM, said:

kgr, on Jan 4 2007, 07:20 PM, said:

I started to play obvious shift a couple of weeks ago.
Certainly now we loose playing this method:
- mistakes (eg. forgetting that suit bid by declarer can not be OS, suit bid by defence is OS...)
- And more important!: It is a much more difficult signalling method then eg simple encourage/discurage. You should clearly remember the rules you agreed, even if the dummy would intuitively propose another suit as OS. I feel that the energie I have to spend for this is lost to count the hand and do other necessary thinking...
...I don't expect to get any advantage from OS during the first couple of months. (I'm even not sure my bridge is good enough to play it all).

(playing OS now makes me remember a post of Fred concerning weak NT, explaining he didn't play it because the related consequences asked too much energie he preferred to spend on other things).

A couple of tips that I hope as you learn "os" will help:
1) Keep in mind if not playing a forced card then high says continue, low says shift at trick one 99.9+%
2) In suit contract think partner bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies weakest 3 card side suit almost always.
3) In NT contract think partners bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies shortest suit, very often.
4) think suit pref in trump suit and starting at trick two very often....
5) think count is very very rare...most common is when in a hold up situation to help out partner.

If you are used to o/e as first discard it can be played along with "os"

Good luck.

Yes, That's what I play as OS and we have these rules.
But it is more difficult and it asks more energie to correctly apply them at the table.

F.i.: We had an auction like this.
1C-(P)-P-(DBL)
P-(2C)-P-(2H)
P-(3H)-P-(4H)
Rem: 1C can be 2-card and 2C was natural.
Partner leads diamond A and I have Club K. I encouraged because I forgot that rule E (see below) is only for declarer and not for Dummy.
====
extract from our rules:
====
Negatives
.....
(E) The Obvious Shift is never a natural suit bid by declarer.
Positives
(1) The opening leader's bid suit is the Obvious Shift.
....
====
Suppose now that 2C was bid by declarer on the way to 4H.
You have to be sure that 2C was bid naturally. So, possibly you have to ask before following the suit.
It is probably all following some simple rules, but it is definitly asking more energie then simple high-low.

[kgr]

Additional OS question:
Seems like after trick one suite preference is played most of the time.
But does it make sense to play it more then one card?

[keylime]

I don't play it after trick 1.

[mike777]

Great questions.

1) In your example it seems dummy bid clubs naturally not declarer, yes?
2) I would suggest even if 2c is only 2+ why not keep it simple and assume that yes in your example clubs would be the obvious shift after the Ace of D lead.
3) Sure there are exceptions, that is why the book is 200 pages long but I hope just getting the basics down should improve your game today not 2 months from now.
4) btw the obvious shift in NT can be a natural suit bid by declarer. This happens often if dummy is void in that suit for example.
5) Yes starting at trick two suit pref very often. This is really easy to do in the trump suit often. If you played a forced card at trick two then do it at trick three.
Pretty soon you are running out of tricks and partner should guess your hand by then hopefully.

[Winstonm]

The difficult thing about O/S is defining weak suits in dummy - it's easy and great when it is xxx in dummy, but what about xxxxx? Do you want to help set up this suit? Say dummy has side suits of AKxx and A10xx - is the A10xx the weak suit or should the 10-spot alter this? There are lots of questions to be answered using O/S, and IMO it takes an experienced partnership to play it well.

I think for many, Eddie Kantar's simple signalling works fine: if partner leads an honor, a high card shows an equal honor or the ability to ruff the third round. If partner leads a low card and dummy wins (at suits), a high card encourages a continuation and a low card discourages.

[mike777]

Agree Winston but that is why I put up those tips. They will explain 90-95+ of the situations. The rest you use the rules.

Dummies short suit will often be the os shift suit if we did not bid at nt or if we do lead a bid suit.
Dummies weakest 3 card side suit will often be the os shift suit if we did not bid or we do a lead a bid suit.
Note os shift suit does not mean the correct, right or best suit to shift to. It defines the os shift suit. You still need to figure out what the correct/winning shift is, this only helps you give partner the best advice you can at trick one.
And to give partner suit pref help starting at trick two.

[whereagles]

I hate 3-way signals. I guess they're ok if you play with Zia, and I guess that's because he knows what's going on regardless of what you play... lol

[sathyab]

Thanks for the responses. It's allayed many of the concerns that I had when I first read the book almost ten years ago.

A couple of questions:

1) I always thought that when partner led A from AK and dummy put down Qxx or longer in the suit, it was a count situation in a suit contract. But there were some hands in the book that treated even this as an attitude/suit preference situation.

2) Against a suit contract, the primary criterion for defining a weak suit is a three-card holding with one honor, even if there's another suit with four little.

[mike777]

1) In os, attitude is 99.9% of the time at trick one not Count!
2) In os vs a suit contract, yep the 3 card dummy side suit is very often the os suit.
3) Note in os you can never tell partner to shift to trumps, you can at best tell partner what your hand is but partner needs to figure out that a trump shift at trick two is best based on what you tell her along with her common bridge knowledge and experience.

To repeat the os suit is not the winning, correct or best shift. It is simply a definition of what suit you want partner to shift to if you play low.

[Winstonm]

I have recently adopted a similar approach to simplify matters, after having experimented with O/S, which I somewhat liked but partner did not.

So we came up with this, using UDCA. 1) Low card means: I do not see any value in a switch of suits, use your own judgement. 2) High card says: I very much believe that a switch of suits is our best defense - work out which suit is most likely.

I like this because my partner (who admits this himself) has trouble visualizing when a passive defense is best, and therefore playing low to encourage a non-shift gets the message across that this is a hand where we shouldn't be helping declarer by breaking new suits.

[glen]

I believe your approach is the best, except at Fred or higher levels, in which case I will leave it to Fred+ to define what is best there.

[Winstonm]

officeglen, on Jan 5 2007, 10:27 PM, said:

I believe your approach is the best, except at Fred or higher levels, in which case I will leave it to Fred+ to define what is best there.

One reason I like it is because you can't fall into the bad habit of over-reliance on signals - you have to think about the hand and try to deternmine what reason partner played as he did. A signalling system that encourages good bridge thinking can't be all bad.