defending philosophy opening a suit, count vs attitude

[Fluffy]

[hv=pc=n&s=skqt54hj654dj42c9&w=s32hq2dkt986ca852&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=pp1np3nppp]266|200[/hv]

 

I led ♠K asking for unblock, partner unblocking ♠J (forced to unblock even if he has 4 spades), this is debatable, but it is of no interest for the purposes of this thread. declarer ducked playing the ♠6. I played ♠Q back, partner playing the 9 and declarer the 8.

 

 

More spades are useless at IMPs, so I switched to hearts.

 

 

The question is, playing 3/5 attitude, shoud I switch to ♥5 or ♥4?

 

I never know if I should show attitude (lowest heart promising a honnor), or count (third heart since we play 3/5 now). If I had 3 small it is obvious I would switch to highest one, but with 4 cards I never know if the 3rd or the 4th is the correct one.

 

From the other position, when opening a suit through declarer where dummy has 2 or 3 small I lead lowest form 4 to a honnor, but when dummy has a honnor I have more doubts.

 

There are times where you have a honnor but want a switch so lead highest pip, this is unrelated to what I am asking

 

 

 

http://www.bridgebas...9HJD9H7D4DKDAH8

[paulg]

I too am interested in what is 'standard', but we switch to 4th best from an honour when breaking a new suit through dummy.

 

When we break a new suit through declarer we use our opening lead methods (which includes 3/5 from good suits).

[awm]

Count for me. Usually you get the best of both this way; if you show attitude only then there are a few rare circumstances where partner would be unable to read the attitude from the count card and does better, but then partner never can figure out if you have three or four and this will fairly often cost.

[SteveMoe]

Fluffy, we play 3rd/5th vs suits and 4th vs NT showing an H in the suit.

from abcd we lead b unless abc is a sequence, then we lead top. Gets us both pieces of info in one lead.