[awm]

gnasher, on Aug 2 2010, 05:15 PM, said:

A heart switch could well be right on awm's hand - declarer might have three of them, so we could give partner a ruff after winning ♠A.

In my partnerships, we have the rule that an attitude signal nearly always relates to the holding in the suit led, and if your attitude is known you signal count or suit preference, whichever seems more sensible.  On this hand suit preference is obviously more sensible.

Sure, but a diamond continuation could also be right. Say declarer has 5♠/5♦ or 4♠/5♦ for example. Perhaps a heart is more likely to be right than a diamond... but if opening leader had a different distribution (say 1-2-6-4) then a diamond is much more likely right than a heart.

I don't think the meaning of East's signal (whether attitude or suit preference) should depend on West's distribution, do you?

Of course, one can make a rule like "if dummy has a singleton, or if the ace is lead and the dummy has the doubleton king, then we signal suit preference." But if you want to guarantee to avoid misunderstandings (while still making reasonably useful signals), you need a fairly elaborate and complex set of such rules. Basically that's what obvious shift gives you.

Playing obvious shift, there are two signals available. One says "please switch to a club." The other says "I'd rather you didn't switch to a club, even though it looks obvious from the dummy." It is true that opening leader must now guess (based on his shape, the auction, etc) whether to continue diamonds or switch to hearts. But at least East does have a signal which cannot be interpreted as "play a club now" and at least there is no confusion about what East's signal "means."

[Siegmund]

Similar to eyhung's post:

Quote

Recent Bridge World had a letter about this issue. The writer thinks that the general rule should be :

suit preference should apply when 3rd hand is known to have 5+ cards in the suit.

Otherwise attitude/count applies.

My own practice, with my regular p, is that attitude (with Obvious Shift) applies, unless third hand is known to hold at least six cards in the suit - basically when opening leader is leading his partner's preempt. Perhaps changing to 5 would be better.

And of course there are a few other rare situations where both my attitude and my count is already known -- maybe I've made a support double of the suit partner led or something -- but in general it's an attitude situation for me.

I am aware that most people use suit preference a lot more in this situation than I do. I don't have any good ideas for how to tell if it's on or off, except an agreement based on 3rd hand's promised length.