udca

[red dwarf]

hello,

I have noticed on several profiles UDCA, anyone care to explain to me what this is? at a guess i think it is a discard system(unusual discards maybe?) but no idea really.

cheers red

[inquiry]

This refers to Upside-Down Count and Attitude (hence UCDA) signals. Upside down because a low card is "even number of cards" if count (as opposed to high low with even), and a low card is encouraging when attitude (instead of a high card as a "come=on" signal).

 

To read more about signalling and defense, check out the following thread in the Beginner-Intermediate forum. Beginners Guide to signaling and Giving Count

 

There are post in there describing a lot of card signal.

 

Ben

[red dwarf]

thank you very much for such a quick reply Ben, i will look at at the thread you suggest.

 

cheers red

[red dwarf]

for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading Ben's fascinating thread on signals i strongly recommend you to do so, super stuff.

[Trpltrbl]

He is a good writer. And he has had lots of experience writing on BBF :rolleyes:

 

Mike :lol:

[aisha759]

I read the very "short" post by Ben about udca and standard carding.. ;)

 

Very nicely done, except that i tried it in a turney with my partner tonite, and got it all wrong <_<

 

o/e still very confusing, i only thought it was used in discards, and not when following suit.... :angry:

 

Nonetheless, its very clear, except when you get into peter, echo, revolving lavinthal (will have to read it over again)

 

THanks Ben

 

aisha

[EarlPurple]

upside-down attitude is clearly a good thing. When you have a good suit you do not want to spoil it by playing away your high cards. For example, partner speculatively leads the ten of spades (top of nothing, or top of doubleton or whatever) against their 3NT contract and you have KQ92 over dummy's AJ76. You don't want to have to spoil your holding by needlessly wasting your 9. (You'll probably find this applies in general). Throwing an 8 or a 9 from a holding like 982 is less likely to be costly.

 

Here is an example of where upside-down count can be useful. You have 10-6-5. Partner leads the ace (or king) of a side-suit in a suit contract. Suppose the auction makes it clear that you can't hold a singleton, but partner would like to know if you can ruff the 3rd round. With standard count signals you would have to play the 5, and if declarer has some of the smaller ones, your partner won't know if you are playing your lowest card or your highest from 5-3, say. But here you can play the 10 which can't possibly be your lowest card.

 

If you did hold 4-2 alone, then with standard count you would have to play the 4 and although declarer doesn't play the 2, it doesn't mean he can't hold it. But here when you play the 2, it must be your lowest card.

 

And if you hold 4-3 alone, you would now play the 3 and declarer could decide not to play his 2. But with 3 cards would you have played an ambiguous 3? No, with something like 9-3-2 you'd have played your 9. So partner knows your 3 is the lowest of a doubleton.

[inquiry]

I wrote a lot of stuff early one (even before I was a moderator), just so there would be some content here... in hopes of encouraging others to visit and post. A large group of these post were in the beginner's/intermediate section, thinking who else might be looking for help? Many of these threads were either suggested by others or actually started by others.. and I am greatful for Bulgarian Superstar Rado for participating in these and sharing his immense bridge knowledge with the rest of us in some of these threads.

 

There are a series of beginners guides, like

A Beginners Guide to "Balance/ing"

 

Beginner’s guide to scrambling 2NT

 

A Beginners Guide to a Sacrifice

 

A beginner's guide to Team Matches (I didn't particpate in this thread... don't know why :-) )

 

A discussion of Imps that might as well be a beginners guide to team matches

 

Double Doubles everywhere_ a thread to discuss the different uses for doubles

 

A discussion of the Law of Total tricks for beginners

 

And these links just scratch the surface of the interesting things you can find if you hunt back further than the last 30 days (especially if you are relatively new to the this site). For instance there is a whole series of play problems designed (hopefully) for beginners, called "good idea" started by BBO yellow JSBB.

 

Take a look at a few of these, maybe it will spur your interest in asking similar type questions, starting your own threads (can you imagine a Beginners guide to jacoby transfer or the like?). You may also even find something interesting from way back then (a year ago or so).

 

Ben

[EarlPurple]

I wrote several articles years ago, including one on the Losing Trick Count that was adopted by okbridge on their pages. I should still have it somewhere, and you might find it on the "frogwump" bridge pages (even though I no longer own that site).

 

As I post this there are many articles still up here:

 

http://www.frogwump.dircon.co.uk/bridge.html

[nikos59]

In my opinion, and despite the fact that Ben's article about signalling

is very well written, if you really are an intermediate player (or a

beginner) you should try to play a *very simple* signalling

system.

 

If you are trying to "read" something into each and every card partner

plays, you are most probably assured of a headache, very bad results

and an irate partner. It is much better to try and exercise your mind

into simple counting-inferring gymnastics while you are defending, i.e. how many

points has declarer? what shape? etc.

 

For this reason, I would recommend to show only count, either standard

or upside down. If you already play standard, by all means keep it, it

isn't worth to switch. You'll lose more by miscounting-straining your mind

than what you might gain, once in a purple moon, by not wasting your 9s.

 

Optional: You may want to add to this what is called "premiere defausse italienne" in French, which in English is, I guess, odd-even, or perhaps Roman discard: 3,5,7,9=I want, 2,4,6,8=dont want and want the lowest/highest of the two remaining suits. This is valid only for the 1st discard. Not for the subsequent discards, not when you follow suit.

 

But still better is to find partners who are able to think.

 

Much later, when you no longer are a beginner, you may want to complicate

your understandings with your regular partner. On the other hand, I have

made a helluva lot of unmakeable contracts against "expert" pairs who were

following elaborate signal agreements and making absurd switches because

pard had played the 4 instead of the 3.

 

n