Dubious Logic

Signals (2)

Last week's article was about signalling; how difficult it is to get right, how bad it feels to get wrong and how the limitations of methods may not solve all your problems. I gave an example where signalling with honours was a way of getting around those difficulties – is this another?

* 5+ Hearts

This simple hand caused a fair amount of heartache; as is all too obvious with view of all four hands, North-South can take the first four tricks - ♥A, ruff, ♣Q, another heart ruff - with the ♦K still to come. Without sight of the other hands, North led a top club. This catered for South having both a doubleton club and also something similar to his actual hand but with the ace of diamonds rather than hearts. So South had to signal, encourage, discourage or perhaps play the queen?

As it might be necessary to lead a diamond from the South side (e.g. North holds ♠92 ♥Q7 ♦K10852 ♣AK97) you should again signal with the queen. Of course, you might have held just Q82 of clubs in which case you would do your best with an encouraging spot card but here there is minimal risk of partner starting a suit of ace doubleton and, rule one, you should keep your signals clear. Will partner do the right thing? Not necessarily.

If you would have simply led your singleton and lived and died by the consequences then the following is probably not for you but there are two more signalling arrangements you might like to consider to make your life easier (or harder). The first is simple; though you'd normally lead ace from ace-king, if you intend to switch to a singleton you reverse that and lead the king. This is far from fool-proof as it won't always be clear to the leader that their partner is 'on message'. How you signal opposite is something I've never seen discussed.

The second arrangement is the so called 'Obvious Shift' philosophy. The idea, originated I believe by American players and writers Pamela and Matthew Granovetter, is that at trick one you signal your disposition toward the obvious shift – and fortunately there are rules that explain what obvious really is. So here, on the club ace, diamonds, the weaker of dummy's suits, would be the obvious shift so South would encourage (i.e. don't shift) and now North would know that South didn't hold the DA. That, at least would be an advance on where we got to. However, one lesson to take to heart is that you won't always be able to signal everything and partner won't understand all the time either; that will save you many points in the future.

Published Saturday 22.Apr.2006