Count or attitude with two small vs suit

[sathyab]

This came up the other day and I was a bit non-plussed. Fairly common situation, your partner a low honor such as the Q or J and you hold two small in a suit contract. And let's further assume that in general, your priority at trick one is attitude. Is it still attitude when you have two little ? If it is, naturally you would play a discouraging card from two small or three small. This was the lay out:

 

[hv=d=n&v=b&n=s72h97432dk4ckj73&e=s65ha8dq9763c9842]266|200|Scoring: MP[/hv]

 

The bidding was p-p-2nt-p-3d-p-4h.

 

Partner leads the Jack of Spades, honor leads are standard in your agreement. Does East play the 6 or the 5 playing UDCA ?

[barmar]

You should signal attitude. When partner leads a high honor, this is usually the same as count, since you're hoping to get a ruff. When he leads something else, it will just be attitude.

[Guest Jlall]

I would discourage.

[Apollo81]

This came up the other day and I was a bit non-plussed. Fairly common situation, your partner a low honor such as the Q or J and you hold two small in a suit contract. And let's further assume that in general, your priority at trick one is attitude. Is it still attitude when you have two little ? If it is, naturally you would play a discouraging card from two small or three small. This was the lay out:

 

[hv=d=n&v=b&n=s72h97432dk4ckj73&e=s65ha8dq9763c9842]266|200|Scoring: MP[/hv]

 

The bidding was p-p-2nt-p-3d-p-4h.

 

Partner leads the Jack of Spades, honor leads are standard in your agreement. Does East play the 6 or the 5 playing UDCA ?

The main reason people signal positive attitude with two small is so that they can get a ruff. Here, you know that you cannot get a ruff, so you should discourage.

[sathyab]

I guess you guys are right. It makes sense to discourage with that hand as there's little chance of getting a ruff. I was facing this problem as declarer however, with the full lay-out being:

 

[hv=d=n&v=b&n=s72h97432dk4ckj73&w=sjt943ht6dat82cq5&e=s65ha8dq9763c9842&s=sakq8hkqj5dj5cat6]399|300|Scoring: MP[/hv]

 

The natural line of play is to pull trumps as you have no idea how many spades the opening leader has , it could be anywhere from 3 to 6. Having seen the six of spades at T1 I thought to myself "If East has three or more spades, I can dump a diamond on the third spade and then another on the fourth spade, pull trumps and try to guess clubs and make ten or eleven tricks; if I play trumps right now what if West wins and plays diamonds thru the King, then I might lose three tricks right away and have to guess clubs to even make the contract". If I thought further I might have decided that there's an even chance that East has the Ace of hearts or even if West had it, I'd have a problem only if he played a small diamond back which he can't afford to if he's looking the Ace alone, as I might easily have the Q and they may lose a diamond trick. If West did win the Ace of trumps and play a small diamond and he's good player, you should play low, as he will either have the Q or neither honor, he could not be underleading the Ace of Diamonds. But I didn't look that far ahead, so plan A seemed good enough :D So I played a second spade and yet another. To my chagrin, East ruffs and plays back the one card I didn't want to see, a small Diamond to his partner's Ace. This is getting worse by the trick. Anyway I ruff the next spade with the nine, over-ruffed and East exits a diamond.

 

Having taken a totally anti-field line of play so far I should now have played West for the Queen of clubs as anyone who chose to play trumps first will play clubs the other way around. But I played East for the Q and went down one in what was a cold contract.

 

I expected that most declarers would make ten tricks as they would also miguess clubs the way I did. Wrong !! This was an OKBridge tourney, so I could see all play records. Only one declarer played clubs the way I did after having discovered that East had 2-2 in the majors.

 

The bidding and opening lead were duplicated practically at all tables. East won the Ace of trumps at T2 and played back a diamond to his pd's Ace or exited a trump a table or two. Now after pulling trumps everyone else played a low club toward dummy :)

 

So the best I could do on the hand was 18% for making ten tricks and I shrank it to 1.87% instead, which felt a lot better than converting a 48% board to 2%.

[Guest Jlall]

I expected that most declarers would make ten tricks as they would also miguess clubs the way I did. Wrong !! This was an OKBridge tourney, so I could see all play records. Only one declarer played clubs the way I did after having discovered that East had 2-2 in the majors.

A great example of why you should not put too much faith in what you think the field will do. The (over)thinking player might have hooked the short hand for the queen instead of just making the percentage play and would usually be converting an average into a zero.