Defending

[sceptic]

Hi all,

 

I would like to know your own preferences with carding, leads and signals, NOT what you agree to play with regular partners, BUT your own personal preference and I would like to see a justification as to why you prefer this method or methods, I realise that some of you may have no specific or perhaps you have more than one method that you play because you can't see any substantive advatage from, i.e. Standard Carding as opposed to UDCA.

 

I will open a second thread for any discussions or arguements, I am just curious in your own personal preference and the reasons for it.

[jchiu]

Here are the agreements that I play with most of my regular partners. This is paraphrased from the system notes I have with Matt Haag. These agreements are very close to what I tend to assume with a pickup expert partner. I have left out specific situations where each signal applies.

 

Against suit contracts:

1. Ace from ace-king (*1)

2. Highest of touching honors (*2)

3. Highest from an interior sequence (*2)

4. 3rd best from even, lowest from odd

 

1. While this has been standard in Europe for years, it seems that it is only recently become standard in the American east coast. I see more advantages for leading the ace from AKx+ because dry-ace leads are quite rare and tend to cost a trick when used inappropriately.

 

(*1) The exception is that we play ace asks for count, king asks for queen-attitude or suit-preference against volunatrily bid contracts at the five level or higher. We do not do this if there is doubt in either defender's mind that the opponents' contract was a sacrifice. Also, it is not important to play ace for count. It is quite sensible to play ace for attitude and s/p and king for count, if this is easier to remember.

 

2. Rusinow never really caught on that much in New England where I started playing. For nothing other than familiarity, I play standard honor leads.

 

(*2) The exception to standard honor leads is from weak honor combinations. From QJx+ or J10x+, I prefer to lead the proper spot card that indicates length against most contracts. Here x really denotes a low card, from QJ9+ or J108+, I almost always lead the high honor.

 

3. See coded 9s and 10s discussion below. I think they are even more useless against suit contracts.

 

4. I think differentiating from three- and four-card length is paramount against suit contracts. This certainly beats trying to lead fourth best throughout, and being forced to lead the smallest card from Hxx or xxx.

 

Against notrump contracts:

5. Ace asks for count or unblock of a queen or jack

6. King asks for attitude

7. Queen asks for unblock of jack

8. Highest from an interior sequence

9. 2nd and 4th best leads from length with regards to attitude

 

5-6. One lead should be the power lead that requests unblock or count failing that. The other should be the asking for help lead that requests attitude. It matters little whether it is played this way, or ace for attitude king for count. I just learned it this way from Eddie Kantar's big red book on defense, and have played it as such ever since.

 

7. Standard treatment to avoid the Bath coup. Although the queen is much more frequent from QJ10+ or QJ9+, it seems that this comes up once in a blue moon. It may be advisable to never have any unblocking power leads (I was recently presented the case for this from a Bulgarian internationalist, and I'm not certain either way on this issue).

 

8. Coded 9s and 10s (coupled with jack denies a higher honor) definitely helps declarer more than it helps the defense. There are certainly conventions that are useful for distinguishing 109x+ from H109x+, like (reverse) Smith echo.

 

9. However, when there is a choice of spot cards to lead from, giving attitude is useful to help partner know what to return when he first attains the lead. However, I don't prefer straight attitude leads against notrump, since the count of the opening suit has relevance to cashout or develop further tricks situations. Quite frequently the opening lead suit serves as communications to access tricks that the defense may develop in another suit.

 

Defensive carding:

10. Upside down count and attitude

11. Standard suit preference

12. Original up side down count returns in suit contracts

13. Reverse attitude returns in notrump contracts

14. Reverse Smith echo against notrump contracts

 

10. Upside down attitude is convenient since you don't have to waste an important spot to inform partner to continue or switch to the suit. I frequently have hands where cards down to the seven matter to preserve the tricks the defense was due in the suit combination (and I don't mean for purposes of scoring the beer card either!). Upside down count just came as an afterthought to upside down attitude around here. Seems to be a trendy thing more than a practical thing.

 

11. I'm not quite sure why upside down suit preference never really became universal, but it is far more important to agree on situations where suit preference applies over count or attitude signals.

 

12. This is more instinctive from someone who always learned to lead high from a remaining doubleton. However, there are cases where as third hand, you win the honor from Hxx and have to lead the larger spot to hold the position in the suit. This is the reason why I choose to return original upside down or present standard count here.

 

13. Fairly standard, although there is a case for returning your fourth best in switching to a suit that the third hand likes. This does help with the count, but I tend to just use this when it is convenient for third hand to switch to precisely the fourth-best card.

 

14. This is one of the most controversial defensive conventions since it is very difficult to play ethically. For the situations where it applies are defined by negative inference, and often defenders cannot really know for certain whether they like the opening lead. There is also no standard on which is the ambivalent message here, although I prefer to use encouragement by the opening leader and discouragement by the third hand here. It comes in handy to solve unknown attitude problems, but if not played in tempo, this convention can land you in front of a committee.

[zasanya]

Std carding;Std signals;4th highest leads;Low from 3 carder honor;

A from AK;MUD.

I was taught to play this way.All of Kelsey's books (at least those I have read) follow these rules.Since whatever little I know re defence I owe to those books I follow them like the Gospel.

I can see the advantages of playing 3rd/5th highest leads though.

[helene_t]

I prefer to lead and discard pretty randomly as I've found that I can make more use of the carding information given by the defenders when I declare, than by the information given by partner when I defend.

 

I know that this should theoretically not be so: the bidding usually discloses more about declarer's hand than about the defenders', so there must be scope for carding agreements that tend to be difficult for declarer to interpret and/or conveys information of no use to declarer. I also know that better players actually do convey a lot of information with there carding, presumably for good reasons. I also think that the design of such agreements is not straight-forward: precisely because more is known about declarer's hand than about the defenders', other things being equal the information you convey tends to be known already by partner.

 

It's just that I don't understand the theory of carding well enough to use it in a profitable way myself. If I just follow carding principles automatically (like always play the highest form xx and the middle one from xxx), most of the times it will be of more use to declarer than to partner. OTOH, If I only convey information after careful consideration, my tanking will cause problems.

 

There was a funny situation two weeks ago at a quarter-final if the Dutch Open Championships: I have a 3-6 fit in a suit in 3NT, with AKJxxx in the dummy. Playing a low from the hand and noticing LHO's thinking pause turned out inconclusively, so I repeated the trick, noticing that LHO played a lower card the second time. I took a look at their CC, which said "Hi=even when declarer leads". So I ordered the King and indeed, the Queen fell. LHO looked annoyed so when a similar situation came up at the next board, I expected him to give false count, which turned out to be the case :blink:

 

I think the way forward for me is to read a lot about defense and then adopting carding agreements for very specific situations, one by one, after I've understood the specific situation in depth. Just adding a lot of fancy conventions to the CC without really appreciating the whys, hows, whens and whennots just not suits my mentality. I've bought some nice books of Horton, Westra, Klinger and Kelsey and also practice a lot with the computer program "Jack", which can be customized to all kinds of carding and gives feedback when I don't do it correctly, for example if I give count in a situation which "Jack" thinks calls for suit preference.

 

This all being said, there are a number of straight-forward agreement that even I can take advantage from: showing a doubleton in the first two tricks against a suit contract (when I lead or when partner leads an ace), and showing suit-preference when giving a ruff or when it's obvious that a shift is required.

[Badmonster]

Sadly I find that I usually fall back to CNRT (Card nearest the right thumb.) I was recently told that's the world's most popular method, which is by turns both scary and comforting.

[mr1303]

I like that pitching a high card means that I want partner to do something, i.e. pay attention, and that a low card means nothing. No guarantee that partner will get it right, but at least he knows when I'm signalling and when I'm not.