[Apollo81]

Scoring: MP

p-p-1♣-1♦
X-3♦-3♠-4♦
4♠-p-p-X
p-p-p

---

♦A,4,7,2
♣6

West thought East's ♦7 was low and wanted East to duck his supposed ♣A a round for a ruff after winning the ♠A.

East was trying to give a deliberately vague signal since he didn't know whether a heart or a club switch was right.

[twcho]

As you stated, from west point of view, east may easily have ♣A and declarer has tenace in ♥ and ♥ return will then be fatal.

However, from east pt of view, he should well aware that ♣ return will be most probably of no use while ♥ return is likely very urgent in case this can help to create a ruff. So he shd signal ♦Q to indicate a shift to ♥.

But this is only deducible on paper for me.

[awm]

I've found that trying to play a middle card as an intentionally ambiguous signal usually doesn't work out very well. Most of the time partner can't figure out that this was "supposed to be an ambiguous card" so rather than getting partner to "figure out what he thinks is right" you get partner to act based on "whether your card looks big or small" which is probably less likely to be right than if you'd made a choice yourself and just made a committal signal. Of course, playing a middle card like this is a great way to transfer blame in the postmortem, but I'd rather get good results most of the time and lose the postmortem on bad results than get good results only half the time while always winning the postmortem. Others may feel differently.

On this hand I think east should signal for hearts. Declarer did open 1♣ after all. Sure it would be great defense to get partner to switch to a low club from Ax at trick two, but this particular holding is not all that likely.

[bid_em_up]

If 3D is preemptive, I'll give 100% to West for doubling the contract to begin with.

Forget about the defense. He's lucky that there is even a possible defense that wins.

And if its preemptive, I think its more likely to find partner with Qx of hearts than it is to find him with the club Axx of clubs and be able to get him to duck the first one as well.

[awm]

The issues with the middle card are:

(1) It's much easier for declarer to falsecard and/or for partner to be confused. The ♦8 from a four-card holding on this hand could be from QT98, but that is the only possible holding where it is the lowest card. On the other hand, the ♦8 might be middle from QT87 or Q987 or T987 or Q985. If I'm known to often play middle cards partner has a tough guess whether my 8 is high or middle, which tends to fuzzy what should be a pretty clear signal from Q875. If I play the 5, this is an unambiguously low signal since it cannot be my highest or second-highest card.... unless I'm known to play middle cards in which case it could be from QT52, Q952.... The point is that partner can usually get these things right if I always am known to signal as clearly as possible but there is a great deal of uncertainty when I am known to often play "ambiguous" middle cards.

(2) When partner sees an intermediate card, he will often spend a lot of mental energy trying to work out why I played this card. Did I play the 7 as my lowest from QT87? Is it my highest non-honor from Q752? What are the relative odds of these holdings? Could it be a middle card? Usually the more effort partner has to expend to try to read my signal, the less he is thinking about defending the hand as a whole, and the more tired he will be at the end of the board.