Splitting touching honours

[gszes]

There is no such thing as ALWAYS in bridge

because there are too many situations where

deviating from the "norm" is mandatory.

 

IMO the "NORM" should be playing the lowest

from any sequence. While this is not always

telling p what is going on it starts to

limit what cards declarer has and has an

extra advantage of giving p much more accurate

information when you have to play a high card

from a non sequence.

 

!S KQJ sequence p leads a low !S dummy has

a singleton if you insert the K p is

still at a total guess as to declarers holding.

There is no reason to assume declarer doesnt

hold the AQJ. If you always play low you

will gain when you dont have a sequence. IE

 

Kxx p leads low dummy plays small and you play the K

and declarer wins. In this instance p knows declarer

has the AQ and can start to count them out. NOT so

if you play high from a 3 card sequence.

 

Your p may need to guess what to do at trick 2 and

playing high from a 3 card sequence gives them a lot less

informaton to work with.

 

P leads low from Txxx and you with KQJ insert the K.

P wins next trick and has to decide how to proceed.

If you are playing high from 3 card sequence they know

nothing since the play of the K could have been forced.

 

At least if you play the J there is a decent chance it is

the lowest from a sequence and continuing your original attack

might be advisable.

 

Do not confuse this with pitching where the TOP of a SEQUENCE

is the norm.

[Codo]

Gszes, you oversimplify it and your example is not helpful.

-I still wait for a declarer with AQJ in the closed hand opposite a singleton to lead towards the singleton.

-When partner leads, you are usually not in 2. seat and we discuss just that.

 

The problem with low from a sequence is that you or declarer may hold some more high cards in that suit.

So if a trick in a side suit proceeds with x from Dummy, Queen from you Ace from declarer, partner does not know who holds the King. If you play the king instead, partner knows, that you have shortage or the queen. Which case is normally quite easy to see.

[Finch]

Now I'm going to complicate things further...

 

Are "splitting" and "covering" the same thing?

 

If declarer leads the J from Jxx in dummy, what card do you play from KQx? From KQ10? from AKQ?

[aguahombre]

I know she means are the principles the same for splitting as for merely covering; so I won't be my usual jerk self. Just mentioned that, in case someone else was about to be my usual jerk self.

[TimG]

I split high from 3 and low from 2.

 

This is what I believe Miles recommends in his book on defensive carding. When his suggestion deviates from "expert standard", he points it out. I don't recall any mention of a deviation on this case.

[Siegmund]

I generally play what I would have led in 2nd. In sufficiently old books (before 0 or 2 higher leads were common), "always high" was recommended. I can see a case for an agreement distinguishing HH from HHH.

 

Amazed to see people playing low in 2nd without an agreement. I would have called that an error by a novice/intermediate who didn't know 2nd hand was different from 3rd.

[aguahombre]

Amazed to see people playing low in 2nd without an agreement. I would have called that an error by a novice/intermediate who didn't know 2nd hand was different from 3rd.

Not so fast, there. For one thing, it is a choice...not an error; secondly, observe some top players on Vugraph who in-fact play the same from 3rd hand as you might in second.

[JLOGIC]

In thinking about this I realized that I rarely split ever from 2 honors lol. In the cases that I do, there is almost always some honor in dummy that clarifies the situation. Random side note as it does not pertain that much to the question at hand but I thought it was amusing. Like when dummy has 3 small or something how often are people splittting with any honor holding?

[Mbodell]

You're a defender, second to play to a suit. You have two or more touching honours, higher than the card led. You are going to play one of your honours. You don't want to be deceptive or random: your objective is to communicate your holding to partner.

 

Which one do you play from two touching honours?

 

Which one do you play from three touching honours?

 

Does it matter whether you're splitting on the lead of a small card, or covering an honour?

 

Does it matter whether the lead came from declarer's hand or from dummy?

 

If the lead was from hand, does it matter what dummy's holding is?

 

I'm interested in both what you think is normal and what you think is best (and why, of course).

 

High from 2. High from 3. Doesn't matter which I'm covering. Doesn't matter which hand the lead came from. Doesn't matter the dummy holding. I think this pattern is more common amongst my peers.

[aguahombre]

Being an experienced player, though certainly not in the top class of the world, I have pretty much always played the cheapest card from touching honors which will get the job done ---varying from that only (in the cases where misleading partner is not an issue) for suit preference signalling. If I play the queen, partner assumes I didn't have the jack, etc.

 

Perhaps, rather than just stating what smart people do, someone could patiently explain the reasoning behind playing top from two or three, rather than what I do.

 

Edit: I am not talking about the cases where we need to mix it up because of restricted choice.

Edited March 2, 2012 by aguahombre

[gnasher]

Perhaps, rather than just stating what smart people do, someone could patiently explain the reasoning behind playing top from two or three, rather than what I do.

Suppose that dummy leads a small card, you play an honour, and declarer wins the ace. To simplify the discussion, I'll pretend that interior sequences don't exist.

 

If you always play the lowest:

- When you play the queen, you have KQ.

- When you play the jack, you have QJ or KQJ.

- When you play the ten, you have J10, QJ10 or KQJ10.

That is, the ambiguity is about the highest card held.

 

If you always play the highest:

- When you play the king, you have KQ, KQJ or KQJ10.

- When you play the queen, you have QJ or QJ10.

- When you play the jack, you have J10

Here, the ambiguity is about the lowest card held.

 

Given a choice, it's generally better to tell partner about high cards and leave him guessing about low cards than vice versa.

 

This is for the same reason that we lead top (or, playing Rusonow/Roman, second) from touching honours. It would be hard to play methods where you lead the ten from all of KQJ10, QJ10 and J10.

 

 

Edit: All of the above applies because we are playing an honour voluntarily. It's different when we're forced to play an honour because partner led the suit and we're trying to win the trick. In that situation the maximum information is conveyed (usually) by playing the lowest of touching honours. Suppose, for example, that partner leads from the king and it goes low-jack-ace. Now he knows that we started with QJ. If we had instead played the queen, he wouldn't know who had the jack.

Edited March 2, 2012 by gnasher

[mikeh]

I split high from 3 and low from 2.

me too

[aguahombre]

Thanks, Andy. How does that balance with, for instance, the knowledge gained by partner when the ten fetches the Ace from declarer? and/or the queen being read as a singleton or KQ --a narrower set of possibilities to read than if we add QJT, QJ(X), etc to the mix?

 

I don't intend to counter any arguments with my own opinions...just trying to figure it out. And it is the 2nd-hand play I am trying to focus upon.

[gnasher]

How does that balance with, for instance, the knowledge gained by partner when the ten fetches the Ace from declarer?

That doesn't tell you much: declarer could have AKQ, AK or just A.

 

and/or the queen being read as a singleton or KQ --a narrower set of possibilities to read than if we add QJT, QJ(X), etc to the mix?

Yes, you get a bit back from that - when you have a singleton king (or play an unsupported king) and declarer wins the ace, it's identifiable as such.

[lmilne]

In thinking about this I realized that I rarely split ever from 2 honors lol. In the cases that I do, there is almost always some honor in dummy that clarifies the situation. Random side note as it does not pertain that much to the question at hand but I thought it was amusing. Like when dummy has 3 small or something how often are people splittting with any honor holding?

 

This is so true for most experts. I had a hand last week playing against one of the top 5 players in New Zealand where I led 9 from 98xx towards my AJxx, it went insta Queen... I started to think about all these things to do but eventually I gave up trying to over-think it because I just knew the guy had QTx or KQ (QT was possible but I was short of entries - obviously leading again from dummy is preferable).

 

Anyway, to answer the question, high from 3 and low from 2 is optimal, I think. I read this in Marshall Miles' "Defensive Signals" originally (as a side note, he answers lots of similar questions very well, def my favourite defense book).

 

A standard example where this sort of scheme gains is where declarer is playing 3N with 8 top tricks and had Kxx in hand opposite xxx, with a chance for a 9th in another suit e.g. a simple AQ finesse. He might decide (as you would!) that he can combine his chances by leading towards the Kxx first, assuming the defense won't continue the suit if the K loses to the A. You can punish declarer for this play by playing the Q from QJTxx so partner will run the suit rather than continuing whatever suit he led.

[gnasher]

Anyway, to answer the question, high from 3 and low from 2 is optimal, I think.

That means that the king can be from AK or KQJ, the queen can be from KQ or QJ10, and the jack can be from QJ or J109. There might be some problems with distinguishing those.

 

Isn't it better to play third from three and high from two? There's much less chance of ambiguity between AKQ and QJ, or between KQJ and J10.

[lmilne]

In theory, perhaps; in practice, I think that you can often pick partner's holding either way. The other point is that you can vary your play, e.g. from JT9 you can play the T to avoid ambiguity with QJ (similar to the third seat position).

[gszes]

Gszes, you oversimplify it and your example is not helpful.

-I still wait for a declarer with AQJ in the closed hand opposite a singleton to lead towards the singleton.

-When partner leads, you are usually not in 2. seat and we discuss just that.

 

The problem with low from a sequence is that you or declarer may hold some more high cards in that suit.

So if a trick in a side suit proceeds with x from Dummy, Queen from you Ace from declarer, partner does not know who holds the King. If you play the king instead, partner knows, that you have shortage or the queen. Which case is normally quite easy to see.

 

the priciple is precisely the same in second/third seat.

 

the play of the Q from Qxx is almost never a good play. Therefore

the play of the Q practically guarantees the K (lowest of sequence).

Playing the K guarantees no Queen and this allows you to start

counting declarer's hand. It is even worse if you hold AKQ and play the

A unless you intend to continue the suit immediately to let p know

what is going on p has every reason to assume declarer has the KQ.

If you play the Q from AKQ and it holds now p has strong reason to

suspect you played from botom of a sequence.

 

In your examples you admit no actual information is exchanged and it

depends on other factors to help determine p holding. Playing lowest

from a sequence can indeed give a lot of information immediately.