BBO Discussion Forums: Signaling Question - BBO Discussion Forums

1. ♥A-♥2-♥J-♥6

This hand is interesting as a defensive signalling hand. At the table, I see two legitimate ways of setting the contract. Partner can either have xxx Jxx xxxxxx A (club to the ace, heart back, club ruff), or Qxx JTx Kxxxx xx (♥K, then wait for slow ♠ and ♦).

How would you signal in your partnership to differentiate between the two?

We all can agree that an attitude signal is not needed, so even ir your usual agreement is attitude on partners lead, forget about it here. 3rd hands signal has to be either count or suit preference.

The usual agreement by attitude people is

attitude > count > suit preference, meaning if attitude is not the right choice, the second possibility is count and there are some situation were suit preference is required.

So let's begin with that sequence.

IF your 2♥ raise almost always or always promises only 3 card support, then you can forget about count, and go straight to suit preference. A high heart shows the diamond king and a low heart shows the ♣A or nothing to shiow (and from the raise there has to be something to show).

Most partnership will not have such an agreement (especially after the 1nt overcall), and in fact, odds might be better that partner has four on this auction. Clearly, now the default signal has to be count. However, if the defense has one possibility. With a singleton club Ace or a club void, if 3rd hand has the ♥J, he can play that as an alarm clock to get the ♣-shift. Otherwise, pretty much any card played will be count by 3rd hand. Assume it is the lowest outsanding heart for odd count, I guess I would try the heart-heart, shift to a diamond defense. If both partners can realize that two hearts are needed and that opener can not hold the ♣A, then west would give s/p, but it is hard to imagine that 3rd hand can work out that his partner does not have the ♣A unless they lead Ace from AK to show higher suit, and King from AK to show lower suit side values. So that the ♥A denies the ♣A once we can see dummy.

Not easy.... of course, if your agreement when qxx hits in dummy is s/p (I don't know anyone who plays that), you have no problem...look at partners heart spot and if it is not low, don't play him for the ♣A or ♣ void.

So with xxx Jxx xxxxxx A, i drop the alarm clock Jack
with Qxx JTx Kxxxx xx, i play the "x" if playing standard carding or the "10" if playing UDCA.

Edit below:

It's an interesting situation indeed. FWIW, in our case, the A♥ would normally be for attitude, but when it doesn't make sense, we fall back to OS when there's QXX in dummy we signal count.


If we had led led K♥ (for the OS) and pard would presumably discourage ♥s to show K♦. If pard encourages, we can hope for the A♣...

Dummy has ♥Q and partner signals count

if he wants us to cash ♥K he will play ♥J to show 3 cards (UDCA), but if he wants us to switch now he should signal 4 cards (lowest)

this is just theorical since lacking a heart entry when he signals 4 we probably won't realise he might be lieing to us based on singleton club ace or void, but it is better than nothing.