[Trinidad]

mycroft, on 2012-July-17, 09:57, said:

And as a side note, is there a reason why people would play "odd encourages, even discourages" with no SP implications over rightside-up or reverse attitude?

For the past 8 years I have played that when following suit, the order from most encouraging to most discouraging cards is: 3-5-7-9-10-8-6-4-2, without SP implications. The advantage over standard or upside down is that the clearest signal is always a low card, which means that it is less likely that you will blow a trick by signalling. I know that this advantage is marginal, but since I don't see any drawbacks (other than in even rarer unblocking situations)...

When discarding, an even card carries a (mild) SP message.

Rik

[barmar]

gnasher, on 2012-July-18, 02:31, said:

I think it's a reasonable question. If you know, from partnership experience, whether or how your partner will signal in a particular situation, it's an agreement.

But you only know what the situation is from your hand and judgement about how the play is going.

I'm not talking about something like "Our first signal in a suit is attitude, then the next signal is suit preference" -- that's an agreement. I'm talking about something like "since I think it's obvious how many spades declarer has based on the auction, we don't need to give accurate count in spades." I think it would be unreasonable to expect a defender to disclose a judgement like this, or any expectations derived from it.

[gnasher]

barmar, on 2012-July-18, 06:35, said:

But you only know what the situation is from your hand and judgement about how the play is going.

I'm not talking about something like "Our first signal in a suit is attitude, then the next signal is suit preference" -- that's an agreement. I'm talking about something like "since I think it's obvious how many spades declarer has based on the auction, we don't need to give accurate count in spades." I think it would be unreasonable to expect a defender to disclose a judgement like this, or any expectations derived from it.

I wasn't talking about situations which are a matter of general bridge knowledge, or specific knowledge derived from looking at your own hand. I was talking about knowledge that results from partnership experience.

Imagine that you were kibbitzing, and the only hand you could see was dummy. If you could predict, from experience of playing with this partner, what signalling method (if any) he would use on a particular trick, that would be a disclosable agreement. If you could make a conditional prediction such as "If East had ♠A his card would mean x, otherwise it would mean y", that would be disclosable too.

If your prediction was something like "Nobody would signal count in this situation", that would be general bridge knowledge, and not disclosable. But only if it was actually true.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-July-18, 07:02

[barmar]

Can you give examples of such partnership understandings about signaling? I'm having trouble imagining it.

You're not talking about something like "Ace asks for attitude, King asks for count", are you?

Or when declarer is playing a suit and partner probably needs to know how many times to duck in order to kill the dummy entry. But that's GBK.

[gnasher]

barmar, on 2012-July-18, 22:24, said:

Can you give examples of such partnership understandings about signaling? I'm having trouble imagining it.

Here are two uninteresting hands from last night. The hands you can see are dummy.

---

They lead ♥3 to the 2, 9 and J. Declarer leads a club to the queen, which holds, then plays ♦10. East plays low. East's diamond card might be count, suit-preference, Smith, or nothing at all. Playing with a regular partner, I would expect to have a good idea which it was. The opponents would be entitled to the same information.

---

They lead ♠9 to declarer's queen. Declarer plays ♣A and a club towards the queen. EW's club cards might be count, suit-preference, or nothing at all, and it might depend on who had the king. Again, knowledge of the partnership's habits would be disclosable.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-July-19, 04:13

[bluejak]

mycroft, on 2012-July-17, 09:57, said:

And as a side note, is there a reason why people would play "odd encourages, even discourages" with no SP implications over rightside-up or reverse attitude?

For the same reason they play all sorts of things which can demonstrably be shown to be inferior: because they want to, because they don't know any better, because simple things are easier to remember, because they have decided logically and their logic differs from yours, or a combination of these.

It is fairly easy to prove that Aspro [spades and a minor, hearts and another], Astro [spades and another, hearts and a minor] and longer major Asptro [spades and another, hearts and another, show longer major with both] are inferior to shorter major Asptro [spades and another, hearts and another, show shorter major with both]. But people play all of them for the reasons above.

aguahombre, on 2012-July-17, 10:54, said:

This is not without problems. We are "need to know" signallers with very few signalling conventions, and right-side-up for count, attitude or suit preference. When we believe we already know the layout, our carding means only that we don't want to keep what we throw away.

We are probably not as good at both of us knowing this on a given hand as (say) Zia, Schermer, Chambers, Hamman, etc. So, sometimes we get it wrong. But, here's the rub: what do we answer when declarer asks in follow-up, "Is this a signalling situation?" And should we answer separately so that partner doesn't hear? Sometimes it would be easy to say that nothing after trick whatever was a signal. Sometimes not.

You tell declarer your agreements. If it is that you judge each situation and you have no specific agreement about this particular situation, then you tell him that. If you have indirect reasons for knowing in this specific situation, then you tell him the indirect reasons and let him judge. If you have experience of this specific situation, so you know what you do in this specific situation, you tell him that. No, you don't send partner away from the table. Let him deal with any UI.