[helene_t]

I am mentoring some BIL'ers. Since I don't consider myself qualified to teaching defensive play I asked for mentees who need bidding practice mainly. But we will often play the hands, too, and then I would like to be able to answer at least some of their questions. One that often comes up is when to give count and when to give attitude.

With some partners I play count on both declarer's and partner's lead. This is a common agreement in England where most of my mentees live. With others I play attitude on partner's lead.

But sometimes it doesn't make sense to give count because it's already known by the bidding or declarer having shown out. One could ignore that (maybe too difficult for partner to figure out whether the count is really known from the bidding, especially if the source is opps' bidding which may not be reliable. But if we chose not to give count in such situations, should it then revert to attitude on partner's lead and SP on declarer's lead?

Sometimes it doesn't make sense to give attitude because I would have played an honour if I had positive attitude. If partner leads low and dummy plays the Jack (assuming that is its highest card) I suppose it would apply. If it were the queen I suppose it shouldn't apply against a suit contract but it should against notrump? Similar when partner leads the queen or jack and there is no higher honour in the dummy. Suppose one wants to explain that to beginners, maybe better instead of trying to formalizing the rules would be to say that whenever attitude "obviously" makes no sense, we revert to count?

Something else I don't understand. When playing standard (or udca) carding and partner leads an ace against a suit contract, we give positive/even. Is suppose it is just semantics whether it is positive or even since it is both. But to explain the logic of it I would need to decide whether I call it attitude or count. In general we give attitude on the lead of an ace. But playing Norwegian carding, we would give negative/even.

Discarding: Everyone at my club plays some kind of SF discards. My impression is that this is not played by better players in general. Maybe in some specific situations, but standard discards would be either count or attitude. What is best to teach to beginners in England?

[NickRW]

Commonest that I've come across personally is 4th best leads, standard attitude on partners lead, most weaker players do not signal anything ever on declarers lead and won't notice if you do. Discard systems vary - what they call odds and evens - by which they mean dodds is probably the most popular - but McKenney (Lavinthal) style has a lot of followers - but it won't dawn on them to use it in an obvious suit switch situation. Some of them like MUD leads - but I wouldn't teach it personally - though paradoxically you'll find some that have learnt top of nothing leading, say, the 9 from 9xxx instead of 2nd best and you have to suffer in silence as declarers 7 or 8 spot cleans up the 4th round of the suit. In short, you don't have a very high bar to aim at if you plan to at least match the standard of teaching re defensive carding.

Slightly better players are up to giving count on declarers lead. Decent players seem to vary a lot in what they like - you run across all sorts.

Whatever signal you teach them to give on declarers lead, I'd teach them to do it all the time at first - leave learning when to not signal until they're a bit more advanced.

Nick

[quiddity]

I think a lot of this stuff is way too confusing for "beginners". Probably the less you tell them about signaling the better; they should be trying to count out the unseen hands and place missing honors based on the bidding and play. Teach them how to identify safe and unsafe leads by looking at their hands and dummy.

In my experience as an intermediate, when you do decide to cover signaling, a small set of rules is best. In America the set might be "attitude on partner's lead, count on declarer's lead, attitude on first discard". Then drill down. Even with this small set there will be questions like:
- which honors qualify for a positive attitude signal
- when to signal positive attitude with a doubleton
- what to do with doubleton honor
which have to be covered.
Then talk about honor signals and suit preference when giving partner a ruff. Qualifiers like "signal count on the opening lead against NT when dummy wins with a queen or lower" come much later.

This may not be the optimal signal set, but for beginners IMO it is far more important that the signals be simple, easy to remember, and very specific.

[Phil]

I think experts disagree on this one too. For instance, lets say I have opened with a weak 2, partner has raised and led a low card, and dummy flops with Axxx. The kibitzer a table away knows that declarer is about to pitch.

You can play one of two methods:

A. High and Low card are suit preference for the highest and lowest suits. A middle card is neutral, which means 3rd hand likes both or neither. An expert pair should probably use a slightly high / slightly low card for suit preference, since partner knows the exact holding.

B . High card encourages (assuming standard carding), which means "I can't handle / or don't like" a shift to the obvious suit in dummy. A low card conveys the opposite. A VERY high card is an alarm clock signal that tries to get partner to shift to something that isn't obvious.

I prefer A, and I would say its more standard than B.

[nigel_k]

If you are teaching rank beginners obviously you need to keep it very simple.

If you are mentoring people who already know the basics of how to play, I would suggest:

King lead asks for count
Otherwise show attitude on partner's lead if that is logical
Otherwise show count if that is logical
Otherwise show suit preference
First discard is attitude and others are count.

This is not too difficult to learn and IMO the sooner they start paying attention to partner's cards the better.

[NickRW]

quiddity, on Jul 7 2010, 07:54 PM, said:

I think a lot of this stuff is way too confusing for "beginners".  Probably the less you tell them about signaling the better; they should be trying to count out the unseen hands and place missing honors based on the bidding and play.  Teach them how to identify safe and unsafe leads by looking at their hands and dummy...

nigel_k, on Jul 7 2010, 08:58 PM, said:

...This is not too difficult to learn and IMO the sooner they start paying attention to partner's cards the better.

To me, the contrasting advice here highlights the biggest paradox in this matter. Make it too complex too early and you overwhelm the student (and carding methods on top of counting declarer's points and shape [which you can do a lot towards without special signals from partner] is a LOT to think about when you're starting out) - BUT - if you don't push them to notice partners signals fairly early in the learning process they will get lazy and think they're doing it right when they're not. And it is hard to break bad habits - and a lot of people have bad habits.

[Little Kid]

The way I think about it, signals are given in this order: attitude > count > suit preference. Although not perfect it seems like a reasonable way to start signalling for a beginner as you can apply it in many situations.

Partner leads a suit: tell him whether you like it or not by playing a low or high spot card if the trick is already won by a big card. If dummy can win partner's suit with something like a Jack, you usually won't have higher honours so now I would give count as it rates to be more useful to partner (he also knows you don't have higher honours). Once partner knows both count and attitude in a suit, you can still make use of your cards for extra info like suit preference. If partner is running a suit and you want him to switch to a higher suit later, play your spot cards from the top.

Declarer leads a suit: give count because attitude is usually fairly straightforward. If he is ruffing the suit in a suit contract we have stuff in it, if he plays it in NT he has cards in it. Count tends to be more useful in situations where declarer leads a suit compared to attitude (eg. for holding up a high card vs NT). Once again if partner has a clear idea about count, you can still play suit preference on the run of the suit if you had something like xxxx.

This is quite a simplified version though because there are situations where one signal takes precedence over another. For instance cashout situations mean suit preference is more important than count. When certain information has been found out from the bidding it is no longer necessary to repeat that information in your carding, like Phil's example of the Weak 2 preempt and dummy tabling a 4card suit. Nonetheless they seem quite general guidelines and most of the time you'll know what partner's cards mean if you are on the same wavelength.


As for the lead of the Ace I am not very sure as I never played anything but std or udca carding. If I agreed to play attitude on Ace I would give attitude when he leads the Ace If you play the Ace as asking attitude, wouldn't your partner have played the K from AK if he was interested in count? Situations where I think attitude would no longer apply is when dummy shows up with the Q, marking partner with AK and thus also making your attitude clear. Another might be when you see a singleton in dummy, partner is probably more interested what he should switch to than whether you think his Ace pleases you or not.

[NickRW]

Little Kid, on Jul 9 2010, 12:55 PM, said:

If you play the Ace as asking attitude, wouldn't your partner have played the K from AK if he was interested in count?

You answered your own question.

Following the logic it has to be Q from KQ if you really want an attitude signal - if you play this. It has its upsides from leaders point of view obviously at the expense of potentially being ambiguous in what it shows for P - which is a nuisance if you can't really know for sure which signal you'd prefer on your opening lead. I play it, obviously I think the upside is better than the downside.

Nick

P.S. Should probably add that I don't think it is beginner standard in the UK.

[zasanya]

I ask my mentees to always give attitude signal on partners lead; and always give count signal on declarers lead.
I then tell them if attitude is clear then give count on partner's lead and if attitude and count are known to P then to show suit preference.Usually in a mentoring session there are 2-3 hands where you can illustrate this point
This may or may not help them in defence initially but it does force them watch partners cards and to think about counting the hand which after all is the basis of good defence in my opinion.
Standard or udca makes no difference again in my opinion.