OliverC's Precision Parlour        Guest User

Honour Leads

There are numerous different agreements you can have about Honour Leads against suits and against No Trumps. Each method has advantages and disadvantages and, at the end of the day, it is far more important that you and your partner have some sort of agreement as to what you are playing than exactly what that agreement is. The one area where I struggle to find any sensible alternative is what is known as "Strong Ten Leads" against No Trump Contracts:

Strong Tens

The idea of this is that the lead of a 10 is normally a strong lead. The only exception is when the lead is from a singleton ten or a doubleton where the 10 is the highest card (ie: leading high-low). Apart from those two exceptions, the lead of the ten is always from an interior sequence and always guarantees possession of a card higher than the Jack:

• From 10xx, lead your lowest card
• From 109x or 98x lead the 9
• From J10x, J109, lead the Jack, which denies possession of a higher honour than the Jack.
• From QJ10, lead the Queen
• From Q109, K109, A109, KJ10, AJ10, lead the 10.
• From KQJ and KQx lead the King.
• From KQ109 lead the Queen (so the lead of the Queen effectively asks partner to unblock the Jack if they have it)

So the lead of the 10 is always strong. If the Jack is held, then so is the Ace or King, but otherwise it guarantees possession of the Ace King or Queen as well. The advantage of this method is that if partner has an honour it is always pretty clear what action they should take when they have an honour card in the suit themselves. For example: Opps have bid 1NT-3NT, partner leads the ♠10 and Dummy goes down with xx. You hold Kxx in the suit and know you must rise with the King, knowing partner has either AJ10..., Q109... or A109.... If Dummy holds Jxx, however, it's clear to duck at trick 1.

Spot Card Leads

I've never seen any really significant advantage in playing, for example, 3rd & 5th highest leads or attitude leads rather than 4th highest. As with Honour Leads, it is more important that you and partner are on the same wavelength than that you are on any particular wavelength. To some extent the same is true when leading from 3 or 4 small cards but here there is one exception in the sense that I would always choose to play "top-of-nothing" against No Trumps and never play it against Suit Contracts, where I would prefer to play either MUD (Middle-Up-Down) or lowest from 3 small.

Top-of-Nothing against No Trumps
The advantage I see here is that a lead of 4th highest or similar is always promising an honour of some sort, nothing more. In that sense this is a bit like playing attitude leads, which means that the lower the card led the more interested you are in having the suit returned by partner when the opportunity arises.

MUD or Lowest Against Suits
The advantage of "Lowest from 3 Small" is that there is less chance of partner mistaking the number of cards you have in the suit (ie: mistaking your holding for a doubleton). The drawback is that there is nothing to distinguish your lead of Lowest from 3 small from a lead of 4th highest, so partner might place you with a missing honour that you do not have. MUD overcomes this, but on the Opening lead, the danger is that partner might continue with the suit thinking that you have a doubleton when it's disadvantageous to do so if you have 3 or more cards, and at trick 1 there is nothing obvious to distinguish MUD from a high-low lead from a doubleton. Swings and roundabouts...

Signals

There are numerous methods of signalling Attitude and Count: Natural and UDCA (ie: Upside Down signals) seem to be the most prevalent. This has always mystified me, because Roman or Odd/Even signals are by far the most efficient for my money. I am rarely, if ever, stuck for the means to show my like or dislike of the suit led and, if it's a matter of dislike, my preference for some other suit. Using Natural or UDCA you can encourage in the suit led if you have the right cards, but if you want to discourage in the suit this still gives partner no clue as to which suit you do want led. On many occasions Roman signals allow you to show Attitude and Count at the same time, something Natural and UDCA methods struggle to do.

Roman (aka Odd/Even) Signals

The idea of Roman signals is as follows:

• An Odd Card encourages in that suit.
• An Even Card discourages in that suit and tends to be a McKinney/Lavinthal suit-preference signal (ie: a low even card asks for the lowest suit and a high even card asks for the highest suit - normally excluding trumps).

If you do not have an odd card with which to encourage, then the trick is to make a suit preference signal with an even card that you cannot possibly want. Suppose you have ♠Q982 and partner leads the Jack against a contract of 4 Hearts. Dummy goes down with ♠K10x and declarer plays small from dummy. Here you would encourage with the 9, an odd card. If you wanted to discourage a Spade continuation you would play the 8 or the 2. The 8 would ask for a Diamond Switch, and the 2 for a Club Switch. If however, you held the ♠Q10862 and you wanted to encourage a Spade continuation, you would try to ask for an unlikely switch. Perhaps Declarer has bid one of the Minors, for example, in which case you would "ask" for that suit. If partner is awake, they will usually work out that (a) there are a lot of even cards missing and you may not have an odd card with which to encourage, and (b) it's probable that you want a Spade continuation because it's unlikely you'd want the suit you've asked for if you're sitting under the player that bid the suit.

Discards

Roman (Odd/Even) Discards

The beauty of playing Roman/Odd-Even signals is that this method works even better for Discards, epsecially the very first discard you make. Indeed some pairs stipulate Roman Discards only for the first discard. If it is rare that I cannot make a sensible signal using Roman signals, I have absolutely never been stuck for the right discard using Roman Discards. Just as with signals, an odd card encourages in the suit you are discarding in, and an even card discourages in the suit you are discarding in and is a suit preference signal for one of the other two suits. For example if Hearts are being led and you cannot follow suit, then an odd Diamond asks for a Diamond, a low even Diamond asks for a Club, and a high even Diamond Asks for a Spade.

Thus you can potentially discard in any of the three other suits and show a preference for any of the three other suits. Once again, if you desperately want a Club switch, but have no low even cards in the other suits and have no odd Clubs, then ask for a switch to a suit you cannot possibly want with as low a card as you can manage and let partner work it out. So in the example above, if you want a Club switch but have no odd Clubs and no low even Diamonds or Spades, but the bidding, play thus far or declarer/Dummy's probable holding make either a Spade or a Diamond switch very unlikely, then use a low odd Diamond to ask for a Diamond switch or a low odd Spade to ask for a Spade switch (whichever is the unlikely suit), and hope that partner can work it out.

Other Methods

Lavinthal/McKinneyDiscards and Revolving discards are two other popular methods and at least give you some alternative ways of asking for a particular suit, but doesn't come close to giving you the potential choice that Roman Discards give you. Natural discards suffer from the grave disadvantage that often you cannot afford to discard a high card in a suit you want led, and unless you are able to make at least 2 discards, you cannot give partner the right information in one go by discarding low in the other suits. UDCA Discards are even worse, because if you do not possess a low card in the suit you want led, there is absolutely no way for you to ask for it.