[Codo]

I split high, but if the lead is towards Txxx I win low.
From KJT I would never play the ten, most often the jack.

[WellSpyder]

 gnasher, on 2012-March-01, 02:53, said:

One more situation, not explicitly mentioned in my original post: what if it's known that your card is going to win the trick? For example, declarer leads towards dummy's 10xx, and you have KQJx, KQx or QJx. I realise that it's rare to want to signal in this situation, but suppose that you did. Do you follow your "splitting honours" rule, or do you follow the standard rule of winning the trick as cheaply as possible?

I think that's an easy one - I win as cheaply as possible. I think, on reflection, that that may be just a special case of the rule that my "splitting honours" rule only really applies when declarer leads up to the closed hand.

As to the "splitting honours" rule itself, my tendency would be always to split with the highest from three, but I'm not sure it's consistent with two. I'm not as confident as I should be that partners understand this, though - most of my partners seem to start from the presumption that you always split low, and I tend to think it's an advance once I've got them to realise that I will often split high since this can be more informative.

[Tomi2]

my first priority would be to give partner the signal, he expeted me to give anyway, so if this is a count situation i unusaly split low from any two or 4 cards and high from 3 or 5...
if this trick would be smith echo, i split low, if i wanted to encourage and high if not

not sure, if overwriting an information, that is supposed to be importand for US (thats why we have carding agreements), by an iformation about honors in the suit lead by THEM is a good idea

[Nabooba]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-February-29, 16:50, said:

I split high from 3 and low from 2.

So do I, cutie!

[gordontd]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-February-29, 16:50, said:

I split high from 3 and low from 2.

 mich-b, on 2012-March-01, 01:32, said:

That is also what we do.

That's what we did when I had a partner with whom we had an agreement. I thought it was fairly standard, but apparently not.

[gszes]

There is no such thing as ALWAYS in bridge
because there are too many situations where
deviating from the "norm" is mandatory.

IMO the "NORM" should be playing the lowest
from any sequence. While this is not always
telling p what is going on it starts to
limit what cards declarer has and has an
extra advantage of giving p much more accurate
information when you have to play a high card
from a non sequence.

!S KQJ sequence p leads a low !S dummy has
a singleton if you insert the K p is
still at a total guess as to declarers holding.
There is no reason to assume declarer doesnt
hold the AQJ. If you always play low you
will gain when you dont have a sequence. IE

Kxx p leads low dummy plays small and you play the K
and declarer wins. In this instance p knows declarer
has the AQ and can start to count them out. NOT so
if you play high from a 3 card sequence.

Your p may need to guess what to do at trick 2 and
playing high from a 3 card sequence gives them a lot less
informaton to work with.

P leads low from Txxx and you with KQJ insert the K.
P wins next trick and has to decide how to proceed.
If you are playing high from 3 card sequence they know
nothing since the play of the K could have been forced.

At least if you play the J there is a decent chance it is
the lowest from a sequence and continuing your original attack
might be advisable.

Do not confuse this with pitching where the TOP of a SEQUENCE
is the norm.

[Codo]

Gszes, you oversimplify it and your example is not helpful.
-I still wait for a declarer with AQJ in the closed hand opposite a singleton to lead towards the singleton.
-When partner leads, you are usually not in 2. seat and we discuss just that.

The problem with low from a sequence is that you or declarer may hold some more high cards in that suit.
So if a trick in a side suit proceeds with x from Dummy, Queen from you Ace from declarer, partner does not know who holds the King. If you play the king instead, partner knows, that you have shortage or the queen. Which case is normally quite easy to see.

[FrancesHinden]

Now I'm going to complicate things further...

Are "splitting" and "covering" the same thing?

If declarer leads the J from Jxx in dummy, what card do you play from KQx? From KQ10? from AKQ?

[aguahombre]

I know she means are the principles the same for splitting as for merely covering; so I won't be my usual jerk self. Just mentioned that, in case someone else was about to be my usual jerk self.

[TimG]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-February-29, 16:50, said:

I split high from 3 and low from 2.

This is what I believe Miles recommends in his book on defensive carding. When his suggestion deviates from "expert standard", he points it out. I don't recall any mention of a deviation on this case.

[Siegmund]

I generally play what I would have led in 2nd. In sufficiently old books (before 0 or 2 higher leads were common), "always high" was recommended. I can see a case for an agreement distinguishing HH from HHH.

Amazed to see people playing low in 2nd without an agreement. I would have called that an error by a novice/intermediate who didn't know 2nd hand was different from 3rd.

[aguahombre]

 Siegmund, on 2012-March-01, 20:33, said:

Amazed to see people playing low in 2nd without an agreement. I would have called that an error by a novice/intermediate who didn't know 2nd hand was different from 3rd.

Not so fast, there. For one thing, it is a choice...not an error; secondly, observe some top players on Vugraph who in-fact play the same from 3rd hand as you might in second.

[JLOGIC]

In thinking about this I realized that I rarely split ever from 2 honors lol. In the cases that I do, there is almost always some honor in dummy that clarifies the situation. Random side note as it does not pertain that much to the question at hand but I thought it was amusing. Like when dummy has 3 small or something how often are people splittting with any honor holding?

[Mbodell]

 gnasher, on 2012-February-29, 15:41, said:

You're a defender, second to play to a suit. You have two or more touching honours, higher than the card led. You are going to play one of your honours. You don't want to be deceptive or random: your objective is to communicate your holding to partner.

Which one do you play from two touching honours?

Which one do you play from three touching honours?

Does it matter whether you're splitting on the lead of a small card, or covering an honour?

Does it matter whether the lead came from declarer's hand or from dummy?

If the lead was from hand, does it matter what dummy's holding is?

I'm interested in both what you think is normal and what you think is best (and why, of course).

High from 2. High from 3. Doesn't matter which I'm covering. Doesn't matter which hand the lead came from. Doesn't matter the dummy holding. I think this pattern is more common amongst my peers.

[aguahombre]

Being an experienced player, though certainly not in the top class of the world, I have pretty much always played the cheapest card from touching honors which will get the job done ---varying from that only (in the cases where misleading partner is not an issue) for suit preference signalling. If I play the queen, partner assumes I didn't have the jack, etc.

Perhaps, rather than just stating what smart people do, someone could patiently explain the reasoning behind playing top from two or three, rather than what I do.

Edit: I am not talking about the cases where we need to mix it up because of restricted choice.

This post has been edited by aguahombre: 2012-March-02, 09:05

[gnasher]

 aguahombre, on 2012-March-02, 09:01, said:

Perhaps, rather than just stating what smart people do, someone could patiently explain the reasoning behind playing top from two or three, rather than what I do.

Suppose that dummy leads a small card, you play an honour, and declarer wins the ace. To simplify the discussion, I'll pretend that interior sequences don't exist.

If you always play the lowest:
- When you play the queen, you have KQ.
- When you play the jack, you have QJ or KQJ.
- When you play the ten, you have J10, QJ10 or KQJ10.
That is, the ambiguity is about the highest card held.

If you always play the highest:
- When you play the king, you have KQ, KQJ or KQJ10.
- When you play the queen, you have QJ or QJ10.
- When you play the jack, you have J10
Here, the ambiguity is about the lowest card held.

Given a choice, it's generally better to tell partner about high cards and leave him guessing about low cards than vice versa.

This is for the same reason that we lead top (or, playing Rusonow/Roman, second) from touching honours. It would be hard to play methods where you lead the ten from all of KQJ10, QJ10 and J10.


Edit: All of the above applies because we are playing an honour voluntarily. It's different when we're forced to play an honour because partner led the suit and we're trying to win the trick. In that situation the maximum information is conveyed (usually) by playing the lowest of touching honours. Suppose, for example, that partner leads from the king and it goes low-jack-ace. Now he knows that we started with QJ. If we had instead played the queen, he wouldn't know who had the jack.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-March-02, 10:16

[mikeh]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-February-29, 16:50, said:

I split high from 3 and low from 2.

me too

[aguahombre]

Thanks, Andy. How does that balance with, for instance, the knowledge gained by partner when the ten fetches the Ace from declarer? and/or the queen being read as a singleton or KQ --a narrower set of possibilities to read than if we add QJT, QJ(X), etc to the mix?

I don't intend to counter any arguments with my own opinions...just trying to figure it out. And it is the 2nd-hand play I am trying to focus upon.

[gnasher]

 aguahombre, on 2012-March-02, 10:19, said:

How does that balance with, for instance, the knowledge gained by partner when the ten fetches the Ace from declarer?

That doesn't tell you much: declarer could have AKQ, AK or just A.

Quote

and/or the queen being read as a singleton or KQ --a narrower set of possibilities to read than if we add QJT, QJ(X), etc to the mix?

Yes, you get a bit back from that - when you have a singleton king (or play an unsupported king) and declarer wins the ace, it's identifiable as such.

[lmilne]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-March-02, 00:39, said:

In thinking about this I realized that I rarely split ever from 2 honors lol. In the cases that I do, there is almost always some honor in dummy that clarifies the situation. Random side note as it does not pertain that much to the question at hand but I thought it was amusing. Like when dummy has 3 small or something how often are people splittting with any honor holding?

This is so true for most experts. I had a hand last week playing against one of the top 5 players in New Zealand where I led 9 from 98xx towards my AJxx, it went insta Queen... I started to think about all these things to do but eventually I gave up trying to over-think it because I just knew the guy had QTx or KQ (QT was possible but I was short of entries - obviously leading again from dummy is preferable).

Anyway, to answer the question, high from 3 and low from 2 is optimal, I think. I read this in Marshall Miles' "Defensive Signals" originally (as a side note, he answers lots of similar questions very well, def my favourite defense book).

A standard example where this sort of scheme gains is where declarer is playing 3N with 8 top tricks and had Kxx in hand opposite xxx, with a chance for a 9th in another suit e.g. a simple AQ finesse. He might decide (as you would!) that he can combine his chances by leading towards the Kxx first, assuming the defense won't continue the suit if the K loses to the A. You can punish declarer for this play by playing the Q from QJTxx so partner will run the suit rather than continuing whatever suit he led.