Signals at trick one

[hutchau]

I have often noticed strange cards being played by world class players at trick 1 where either attitude or count are what I expected.

eg On the opening lead holding something like Q872, after dummy played the Ace,the 7 has been played.I find this card impossible to read as

[a]If it is a high Attitude card, the 8 shudda been played[highest affordable]

If a count card again the 8 or the 2 shud be played depending on agreement.

Is there some other system of signals being used [eg odd/even] in this situation.

If so can someone direct me to info on this?

Thanks all.

[mikeh]

A couple of comments: when you say world class, are these self-defined wc or real wc players?

 

Secondly, even true experts sometimes make lazy plays.

 

I know no-one who would play odd/even on partner's lead: it makes no sense to do so, since your choices of spot are usually somewhat constrained :P

 

A lot of good players, wc and lesser, play obvious switch, so that the attitude shown is relative to the 'obvious switch' suit and the suit led, but that does not explain the ambiguity you noticed: from Q872, you should play either the 8 or the 2, depending on methods and intent: it is difficult to see how the 7 is ever the 'right' card.

[Guest Jlall]

Personally I would never play the 7 in this spot.

[glen]

In a Bridge World January 07 tournament report, Michael Rosenberg talks about his:

strong belief in "murky signals".  When I don't know what I want, I play an unreadable card; partner, who cannot interpret my card with certainty, suspects that I have doubt.  It may sound weird, but it tends to work well.

Personally when my ex-partners have done this repeatedly it drives me crazy, resulting in a change of partnership status.

[DrTodd13]

A couple of comments: when you say world class, are these self-defined wc or real wc players?

 

Secondly, even true experts sometimes make lazy plays.

 

I know no-one who would play odd/even on partner's lead: it makes no sense to do so, since your choices of spot are usually somewhat constrained :P

 

A lot of good players, wc and lesser, play obvious switch, so that the attitude shown is relative to the 'obvious switch' suit and the suit led, but that does not explain the ambiguity you noticed: from Q872, you should play either the 8 or the 2, depending on methods and intent: it is difficult to see how the 7 is ever the 'right' card.

I play it and it has proven useful. In my experience, it is no worse than other mechanisms when you have a limited number of cards but provides more info when you have cards to spare. Q872 is a perfect example. 7 is encouraging. 8 says lead the high suit. 2 says lead the low suit.

[mikeh]

Odd even discards are one thing, and I play them with one partner, altho I don't like the extra problems created, from an ethical point of view, when I hold no convenient spot. That is rare, since you almost always can choose to encourage in one suit or discourage in one or two other suits, and sometimes the play has developed such that you have already signalled some preference.

 

However, to assert that you can play odd/even on partner's lead is weird. Yes, if you hold, and ARE KNOWN TO HOLD Q872, you can play the 7 as encouraging etc. But what if you hold 973: all of your cards are encouraging. What if you hold Q862: all of your cards are discouraging. And what if you hold Q82? I have played a lot of bridge in a lot of places and have NEVER seen anyone use this method. It is unplayable

[paulg]

According to their CC from last August, Bocchi-Duboin play odd is encouraging on partner's lead. It is unclear whether even is count or suit preference (though they list count as more important than s/p).

 

Paul

[mikeh]

I saw that as well, but I refuse to believe that they meant odd/even: heck, even these guys sometimes hold cards that don't fit their method, and I have trouble believing that anyone who has gone to the trouble these guys have, in designing their methods, would play an impossible, and I do mean impossible, method. Q86...what do they do to encourage? Hesitate? 753, what do they do to say they don't like the suit? Frown?

[DrTodd13]

I think you're being pretty pompous here. You've never tried this method and you're trying to tell me it is unplayable even though I've played it for a long time and haven't really had any problems with it. Having all even spots or odd spots certainly does restrict your options but in that case, we have a fallback plan. In that case, we revert to upside-down attitude. You can choose not to believe me but I'm telling you that looking at your own spots, dummy's spots and declarer's card you can make a pretty good guess whether pd has only even or odd spots. Ask the people that watch me and foobar play and see what they have to say.

[barmar]

A common solution to the problems that occur when you use odd-even signals and you don't have any of the right cards is to play that a high odd card is less encouraging than a low one. Often partner can see enough of the spot cards to figure out that you had a choice of odd ones and deliberately played a high one (there are only 4 even spot cards, so this isn't uncommon). Similarly, when the discouraging signal also includes suit preference, partner can frequently tell that you didn't have enough choice to intend a specific switch.

[whereagles]

Odd/even signals on discard are ok, but, at trick 1, they are a quick and painful way to get into an arguing at the end of the session.

[mikeh]

I think you're being pretty pompous here.  You've never tried this method and you're trying to tell me it is unplayable even though I've played it for a long time and haven't really had any problems with it.  Having all even spots or odd spots certainly does restrict your options but in that case, we have a fallback plan.  In that case, we revert to  upside-down attitude.  You can choose not to believe me but I'm telling you that looking at your own spots, dummy's spots and declarer's card you can make a pretty good guess whether pd has only even or odd spots.  Ask the people that watch me and foobar play and see what they have to say.

arrogant, yes, pompous... maybe B)

 

I have played odd even discards, so it is not as if I am unfamiliar with the concepts. As I have said before (and as Rosenberg has written) one of the intrinsic problems with o/e is that there will be hands on which it is necessay to think about which 'lie' to tell, and that almost always, and completely innocently, results in a variation in tempo.

 

Your method seems to me to magnify that issue. You are frequently playing udca rather than o/e, and not only when you hold all odd cards and want to discourage or all even and want to encourage. 752: now your choices are an odd card, encouraging if partner thinks it is o/e, or an even card, discouraging if o/e or a low card encouraging if it is udca or a 7 presumably discouraging if udca or a 5, presumably ambiguous if udca. So it seems to me that you are inevitably going to break tempo on many hands, deciding which lie to tell.

 

And you rely upon declarer's choice of spot card, played after your 'signal' to tell your partner what your card meant???????

 

I hope that you alert your methods... including the critical info that you actually play o/e or udca depending on your holding. An intelligent declarer could have a LOT of fun choosing his falsecard... he can choose an odd card or an even card depending on how he assesses your problem.....now, maybe you use the fact that the intelligent declarer will have to process so much info that you can tell whether he is false-carding... or maybe you don't announce your fall-back signalling... or maybe you generally don't play against declarers good enough to use your methods against you.

 

When I say 'unplayable', obviously that is not intended literally: anything is 'playable': it is just that some methods are demonstrably inferior to others.

 

It is easy, I hope, to see the problems inherent in your approach... what I don't see are the corresponding or offsetting advantages.

[DrTodd13]

Maybe I wasn't clear. We only play this method at trick 1. There are no tempo issues at trick one because 3rd hand should be thinking about the hand anyway after seeing dummy. Nobody can determine whether you are thinking about which card to play or figuring out how many points everyone has, shape, planning the hand, etc.

 

We pre-alert that we have special carding. Only 1% of people ever ask. Declarer's card is certainly a hint as to the spots but we realize declarer can falsecard. As to the benefits, you're telling me that knowing what suit to switch to is not beneficial? You are over-emphasizing the problems and rejecting the benefit. I'll admit there can and have been problems but there have been more times where my partner was able to tell me to make a switch that I otherwise could not have figured out to do. It is hard to test this method against good opponents because it is illegal in f2f acbl.

[sathyab]

Does anyone have serious experience playing Obvious Shift signals ? A recent thread on the topic revived my interest and upon reading the examples in the book, "Switch in Time", chosen no doubt to highlight the benefits of the method rather than the problems it creates, I found a lot of hands where you would make a play that'd make it really hard if not impossible for partner to read at T1, say the 6 from 762, playing standard signals. Playing the deuce would discourage the suit led and tolerance for switch to the obvious shift suit and playing the seven is encouraging. So when you want neither and you have decided that continuing the suit is the lesser of the two evils, you play the 6 and partner usually continues the suit and then realizes what you intended when you play the 7 at T2 and of course in the example hands, no damage happens or more damage would have happened if he had not continued the suit. How playable is this structure ?

[awm]

I've played a lot of obvious shift in serious partnerships, as well as the granovetter "suit preference" carding. My experience has been that:

 

(1) Obvious shift at trick one works really well. Of course you have to agree on which is the "obvious shift" suit but their rules work fine for that (gotta remember them). In fact a lot of good players use obvious shift implicitly, in that they will encourage if they can't see any future in switching even when they don't hold values in the opening lead suit.

 

(2) The suit preference carding signals work very well against suit contracts, but less so against notrump. It might be better to play smith vs. notrump and suit preference vs. suits. The issue is that in notrump there is sometimes ambiguity as declarer wins the lead and starts running his side suit, as to which of the other three suits you are signaling for. It usually works okay, but smith might actually be better.

 

Of course there's really a secondary question being asked here, which is "when, if ever, should I play unclear cards like 6 from 762?" My general experience has been that a style where "three-way" signals are used (i.e. there are more than two possible messages to transmit at trick one) works very well against bad declarers (who will rarely falsecard) and very poorly against good declarers (who will often falsecard). Apparently some good players (i.e. Rosenberg) disagree with me on this. In any case I don't think this issue is directly correlated with obvious shift carding; the main point of obvious shift is that a discouraging signal suggests a specific alternate suit rather than just discouraging the suit lead, and that an encouraging signal might be made without strength in the suit lead if weak in the specific alternate suit.

[Al_U_Card]

"Switch in time" for me was a godsend. It worked well 19 times out of 20 so as far as its liabilities....they were more than compensated by its efficiency. No system is perfect and std methods are ok too. Every time I kibb true WC, not only are they aware of what cards are held and what a specific card played tends to mean, they are also VERY aware of falsecards etc. by both pard and decl. so....thats how ya get to be WC. ;)

[mikeh]

Does anyone have serious experience playing Obvious Shift signals ? A recent thread on the topic revived my interest and upon reading the examples in the book, "Switch in Time", chosen no doubt to highlight the benefits of the method rather than the problems it creates, I found a lot of hands where you would make a play that'd make it really hard if not impossible for partner to read at T1, say the 6 from 762, playing standard signals. Playing the deuce would discourage the suit led and tolerance for switch to the obvious shift suit and playing the seven is encouraging. So when you want neither and you have decided that continuing the suit is the lesser of the two evils, you play the 6 and partner usually continues the suit and then realizes what you intended when you play the 7 at T2 and of course in the example hands, no damage happens or more damage would have happened if he had not continued the suit. How playable is this structure ?

A former (and I hope future) partner and I played obvious switch for about 5 years, culminating in a Bermuda Bowl appearance, so I think we played it seriously ;) We played almost but not quite the way Grannovetter described it.

 

We started by really using it excessively, to get used to the idea, but found that good declarers can pick your hand apart if you give too much info. So we adjusted to giving pretty consistent signals at trick 1, with discretionary signals for the next few tricks, and no obvious switch/suit preference by about trick 5, by which time we had usually done all we needed to do. This discretionary treatment required some acclimatization, but essentially trick 2 signals were probably 80% signals and 20% meaningless, trick 3 maybe 60-40 etc.

[mike777]

Does anyone have serious experience playing Obvious Shift signals ? A recent thread on the topic revived my interest and upon reading the examples in the book, "Switch in Time", chosen no doubt to highlight the benefits of the method rather than the problems it creates, I found a lot of hands where you would make a play that'd make it really hard if not impossible for partner to read at T1, say the 6 from 762, playing standard signals. Playing the deuce would discourage the suit led and tolerance for switch to the obvious shift suit and playing the seven is encouraging. So when you want neither and you have decided that continuing the suit is the lesser of the two evils, you play the 6 and partner usually continues the suit and then realizes what you intended when you play the 7 at T2 and of course in the example hands, no damage happens or more damage would have happened if he had not continued the suit. How playable is this structure ?

I got the book and played it since it first came out. 87 or 88 I think... I know I got it just after the crash of 87 ;). ouch...

 

I love it but you really need a decent long term partnership to play it. As for playing a confusing card at trick one, keep in mind in "obvious shift" a high card encourges, a low card says "ok for obvious shift suit" and the confusing card means "ok for the unusual shift suit". Yes reading this last signal(rare) is and can be difficult. In any event I love obvious shift as others have said and it works 98+% of the time.

[kgr]

I started to play obvious shift a couple of weeks ago.

Certainly now we loose playing this method:

- mistakes (eg. forgetting that suit bid by declarer can not be OS, suit bid by defence is OS...)

- And more important!: It is a much more difficult signalling method then eg simple encourage/discurage. You should clearly remember the rules you agreed, even if the dummy would intuitively propose another suit as OS. I feel that the energie I have to spend for this is lost to count the hand and do other necessary thinking...

...I don't expect to get any advantage from OS during the first couple of months. (I'm even not sure my bridge is good enough to play it all).

 

(playing OS now makes me remember a post of Fred concerning weak NT, explaining he didn't play it because the related consequences asked too much energie he preferred to spend on other things).

[Winstonm]

arrogant, yes, pompous... maybe 

 

That would be either arropous or pompogant, no? I kind of like pompogant, myself.

 

I have known quite a few pretty good players who believed wholeheartedly in giving count on opening lead with the bottom two cards - hence, from Q872 they always played the 7 in the described situation.

 

I'm not condoning this method, only reporting it as something I have witnessed, and from many different players so it was not an isolated event.

[mike777]

I started to play obvious shift a couple of weeks ago.

Certainly now we loose playing this method:

- mistakes (eg. forgetting that suit bid by declarer can not be OS, suit bid by defence is OS...)

- And more important!: It is a much more difficult signalling method then eg simple encourage/discurage. You should clearly remember the rules you agreed, even if the dummy would intuitively propose another suit as OS. I feel that the energie I have to spend for this is lost to count the hand and do other necessary thinking...

...I don't expect to get any advantage from OS during the first couple of months. (I'm even not sure my bridge is good enough to play it all).

 

(playing OS now makes me remember a post of Fred concerning weak NT, explaining he didn't play it because the related consequences asked too much energie he preferred to spend on other things).

A couple of tips that I hope as you learn "os" will help:

1) Keep in mind if not playing a forced card then high says continue, low says shift at trick one 99.9+%

2) In suit contract think partner bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies weakest 3 card side suit almost always.

3) In NT contract think partners bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies shortest suit, very often.

4) think suit pref in trump suit and starting at trick two very often....

5) think count is very very rare...most common is when in a hold up situation to help out partner.

 

If you are used to o/e as first discard it can be played along with "os"

 

Good luck.

[jmc]

I have heard that it is common in Italy for people to play odd/ even cards when partner leads to encourage or suggest side suits. Many play odd/even on the first discard in the US this way. I am pretty certain this is illegal on the GCC, however, to play odd/even not as a discard but on partner's lead. What do you all think?

 

The GCC carding section reads:

 

Dual-message carding strategies are not approved except on each

defender’s first discard. Except for the first discard only right-side-up or

upside-down card ordering strategies are approved. Encrypted signals are

not approved. In addition, a pair may be prohibited from playing any method

(such as suit preference systems at trick one), when they are deemed to be

playing it in a manner which is not compatible with the maintenance of proper

tempo (much like dual message signals).

 

jmc

[keylime]

Adam,

 

Larry and I play O/S over suits, but NOT over NT. We haven't had many troubles with this arrangement and it's clearer to our mindset.

[kgr]

I started to play obvious shift a couple of weeks ago.

Certainly now we loose playing this method:

- mistakes (eg. forgetting that suit bid by declarer can not be OS, suit bid by defence is OS...)

- And more important!: It is a much more difficult signalling method then eg simple encourage/discurage. You should clearly remember the rules you agreed, even if the dummy would intuitively propose another suit as OS. I feel that the energie I have to spend for this is lost to count the hand and do other necessary thinking...

...I don't expect to get any advantage from OS during the first couple of months. (I'm even not sure my bridge is good enough to play it all).

 

(playing OS now makes me remember a post of Fred concerning weak NT, explaining he didn't play it because the related consequences asked too much energie he preferred to spend on other things).

A couple of tips that I hope as you learn "os" will help:

1) Keep in mind if not playing a forced card then high says continue, low says shift at trick one 99.9+%

2) In suit contract think partner bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies weakest 3 card side suit almost always.

3) In NT contract think partners bid suit or your bid suit is os if not lead otherwise dummies shortest suit, very often.

4) think suit pref in trump suit and starting at trick two very often....

5) think count is very very rare...most common is when in a hold up situation to help out partner.

 

If you are used to o/e as first discard it can be played along with "os"

 

Good luck.

Yes, That's what I play as OS and we have these rules.

But it is more difficult and it asks more energie to correctly apply them at the table.

 

F.i.: We had an auction like this.

1C-(P)-P-(DBL)

P-(2C)-P-(2H)

P-(3H)-P-(4H)

Rem: 1C can be 2-card and 2C was natural.

Partner leads diamond A and I have Club K. I encouraged because I forgot that rule E (see below) is only for declarer and not for Dummy.

====

extract from our rules:

====

Negatives

.....

(E) The Obvious Shift is never a natural suit bid by declarer.

Positives

(1) The opening leader's bid suit is the Obvious Shift.

....

====

Suppose now that 2C was bid by declarer on the way to 4H.

You have to be sure that 2C was bid naturally. So, possibly you have to ask before following the suit.

It is probably all following some simple rules, but it is definitly asking more energie then simple high-low.

[kgr]

Additional OS question:

Seems like after trick one suite preference is played most of the time.

But does it make sense to play it more then one card?