[FrancesHinden]

---

Partner leads the ace of diamonds and your agreement is to give standard count (so partner knows you have an odd number)
Partner continues with the king of diamonds. What do you discard?

[JLOGIC]

Spoiler

I don't know if this is a "help partner" type thing or a technical thing but I would pitch an encouraging club since T9xx of hearts might be important if partner is 0373. For instance, if declarer has KQxxxx AQJxx xx --, on a club back to the Q A and ruff, declarer might play spade to the ace getting the bad news, and now hook a heart. If I pitch a discouraging heart declarer may well decide not to hook a heart. If declarer is not 6520 then we have them beat anyways as long as partner play a club, which presumably he will on the 9 of clubs pitch. I am not sure if 3D on --- Kxx AKxxxxx xxx counts as weak but not ridiculous though. If this hand is about building a fence around partner so we definitely get a club shift then the 2 of hearts seems like the best play so he doesn't have notions of trump shifts or w/e. But honestly if I pitch an encouraging club I can't see anything but a club coming back

[rogerclee]

Spoiler

I can't come up with a scenario where partner will play the third diamond unless it is down anyway if we encourage in clubs normally. Dropping the A has some appeal but I don't think it is ever necessary, and it can cost a vulnerable undertrick sometimes. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

[cnszsun]

If declarer has 2 clubs, we always beat it. But, if he is 6421 or 5521, we need partner to shift to club, so I discard club ace as an alarm signal. I guess partner will understand this.

[gszes]

discard a low heart (assuming that is doscouraging in your signalling system.

These auctions are fraught with peril for the defense. The only way to allow the opps
to make 4s might be a club continuation after we gleefully alarm with the A or encourage
with the 9. With 2 entries to dummy we need to make sure declarer cant score more than
1 club even under worst case scenarios so tossing any club is out. With the singleton heart,
in dummy, it would seem fairly obvious we would encourage a heart if we had the A and our
discouraging heart play should be more than sufficient to get p to shift to a club (since we
better have clubs covered if we hate hearts and are asking for the other suit).

an alarm clock signal is normally done to awaken p to a line of defense they may not normally
consider. In this hand that alarm might be to make sure p returns a 3rd dia so we can ruff with
our stiff K of spades (imagine declarer with QJT9xxxxx AK xx void this defense would be the only
way to hold declarer to making 4.

[rmnka447]

Spoiler

I'm discarding an encouraging ♣ 9. If declarer has at least 1 ♣, we beat the hand. If not, it still might be the right switch. If pard has exactly 1 ♠ and declarer ruffs, he will be shortened down to the same number of trump as you.

[Codo]

There are two problems:
1. How to beat them if declarer is 6520?
2. How do we let partner into the secret, that we need a club trick now and NO uppercut in diamonds? He may play us for a 4513 hand and thinks that he with a 0472 must gives us a trump promotion and we will get the setting tricks with the ace of club or a possible heart trick.

I have no real solution for scenario 1, I just want to keep my tricks intact and do not ruff partners king..

For problem nr 2, I discard the ace of clubs. This will show partner, that we do not want to beat the contract with an uppercut and a cashing ace. And it will surely show the king of clubs, so if declarer is 6421, we will beat him by force.

[StevenG]

I discard the 2♥ because I play McKenney (Lavinthal) in all my partnerships. Throwing any sort of club would just confuse my partners.

So, if the answer Frances wants is whatever the signal is for a club switch, it depends on partnership methods.

[Fluffy]

I play that encouraging the obvious switch when uppercut is possible is 100% mandatory to forget the uppercut and switch to the obvious shift. The only question is if clubs is the obvious shift, I think it is.

[cherdano]

How could there be an uppercut on this hand?

[JLOGIC]

If you cannot signal better than having to pitch the club ace that is a problem. There is a very real chance of that blowing 100 points which is a lot. On top of that it might help them make when declarer is void in clubs since all of his clubs will be high after partners club shift.

[JLOGIC]

Also, as cherdano points out, when partner has 0-1 spade and we are being overruffed there cannot be an uppercut unless we have a stiff spade also lol.

[Codo]

Sorry, as too often I failed to realize that I am behind dummy. These counterclockwise diagramms turn me mad...but reading had helped:Partner lead

[jallerton]

StevenG, on 2013-May-14, 05:46, said:

I discard the 2♥ because I play McKenney (Lavinthal) in all my partnerships. Throwing any sort of club would just confuse my partners.

So, if the answer Frances wants is whatever the signal is for a club switch, it depends on partnership methods.

As a matter of interest, what would a high heart discard mean in this situation, in your methods?

[StevenG]

jallerton, on 2013-May-14, 14:39, said:

As a matter of interest, what would a high heart discard mean in this situation, in your methods?

I wouldn't discard a high heart, unless that's all I had. If so, it must mean no interest in clubs (or hearts) - up to you to work out something sensible on that basis. Maybe not the best of methods, but this is the I/A forum, and trying to get functional methods that intermediate partners can read pays off in practice. (Many of the replies on this thread are from experts, who, I suspect, don't understand the practical problems of partnership building between non-experts.)

[FrancesHinden]

I think I may have posted this in the wrong forum...
Here are some more general thoughts:

- unless we do something clear, partner is going to continue with a third diamond to 'ruff out' dummy's winner. This is the natural defence. If you actually stop and construct hands where it's necessary to play a third diamond, it's difficult (I know, I've just tried). So while we might hope partner will think things through carefully, he might not.

- usually, a discouraging signal in one suit is much the same as an encouraging signal in another, if there are only two suits in the game. Here I don't think that's true: encouraging clubs clearly says: please cash my club (or give me my club ruff). A discouraging card in either suit just says 'be passive'. Encouraging hearts says 'please play a heart' (the ace of hearts could be disappearing on some layouts).

- On this hand, you know that if partner plays a club, the contract is off. (Jallerton pointed out to me that in fact dummy's spades were A87 so you really do know that, sorry I got the hand wrong when I posted it.)

When this came up at the table, my teammate discarded an encouraging club and his partner switched, to beat it. My partner (dummy at our table) said the ace of clubs discard was obvious but I agree that might have the nasty side effect of letting the contract through...

At our table, my RHO discarded a discouraging heart and his partner continued diamonds. This let the contract through in an interesting way:

Declarer has

KQxxx
AKJxx
xx
x

on the third diamond RHO ruffed and I discarded a club. He now tried to cash a club.
The earlier heart discard persuaded me to ruff out the hearts rather than take the finesse. Without that, I think I'd have taken the heart finesse.

[JLOGIC]

One of us is misanalyzing this position so probably that means me but I'll try anyways

Quote

- unless we do something clear, partner is going to continue with a third diamond to 'ruff out' dummy's winner. This is the natural defence.

This just seems wrong to me when partner has short spades. A diamond at worst will pickle our trumps and if we pitch it will give them an entry to dummy. I don't see the advantage or even intuitive feel of a diamond play, it seems like it can only hurt us (barring extreme things like declarer having 8 spades and us having stiff K).

Partner's hope to beat this hand is that we have an ace and a trump trick, or 2 trump tricks. In either of those cases a diamond looks like a potentially harmful play without upside.

Quote

- usually, a discouraging signal in one suit is much the same as an encouraging signal in another, if there are only two suits in the game. Here I don't think that's true: encouraging clubs clearly says: please cash my club (or give me my club ruff). A discouraging card in either suit just says 'be passive'. Encouraging hearts says 'please play a heart' (the ace of hearts could be disappearing on some layouts).

This is unclear to me. With AKx of clubs what can we do but pitch the 2 of hearts (change our hand to JT9x T9xxx x AKx what do you pitch)? Our low club might not look encouraging (could be AK smallest spot) and on top of that we might blow an undertrick by pitching that club (we know on this hand declarer cannot have 3 clubs but partner doesn't know what our hand is, declarer might have KQJxxx AK xx xxx, and more importantly it is easily possible for both declarer and partner to have 2 clubs and then we wanna play a third club for a trump promotion whatever our hand is).

Similarly, depending on our hand we might well not be able to afford to pitch hearts (indeed, I thought with T9xx we couldn't even afford it). In those cases we will probably just pitch a club.

I guess I don't really disagree with you, I just think the passive play on a low club or low heart pitch is a CLUB. This seems way more passive than a diamond.

Quote

When this came up at the table, my teammate discarded an encouraging club and his partner switched, to beat it. My partner (dummy at our table) said the ace of clubs discard was obvious but I agree that might have the nasty side effect of letting the contract through...

I know I'm repeating myself but plays that blow 100 points just to make sure partner does something that he should always do otherwise on an encouraging club or discouraging heart are very bad.

You are risking 3 to save 12*. Your play must stop partner from making the wrong play a lot of the time.

*Yes, I realize it doesnt always cost an undertrick, so it's not like you have to prevent partner from messing up 25 % of the time with this play, but you get my point.

Obviously whether that kind of play is worth it depends on the level of your partner, but even playing with a client I am sure if I pitch the 9 of clubs they will play a club for me 100 % of the time since I encouraged lol. I agree with your point that even ignoring technical aspects about the heart pitch, the 9 of clubs is much better than the 2 of hearts and will cause partner to go wrong less often. I even joke that playing pro bridge an encouraging signal is always better since they must play that suit and a discouraging signal gives them 2 options of plays