3. Motivation Behind Signalling In general, spot cards (non-royals) are quite useless for the defense, unless they’re trumps Signalling makes use of these spot cards and allows the defense to have more insight regarding their partner’s hand
4. Two Schools of Thought School of thought 1: Standard signalling School of thought 2: Upside Down Count and Attitude (UDCA)
5. School of Thought 1: Standard Signalling When following to partner’s lead, low card = discourage, high card = encourage i.e. playing a low card following partner’s lead discourages partner from leading again. This is most commonly used when partner leads an Ace When it is less useful to show attitude (encourage/discourage) e.g. when opponent is running a suit in which you have no stoppers, you can show count instead High card = even number of cards Low card = odd number of cards
6. School of Thought 2: UDCA UDCA users contend that there is no reason for you to throw away high cards in suits in which you have royals because high spot cards may eventually become winners UDCA users thus invert all the signals in standard signalling Low encourage, high discourage Low even, high odd
7. Example of Difference Between Standard and UDCA When partner leads A spades holding 8 and 3 of spades Standard signallers will discard the 8 first and then the 3 on the K. Partner will then know to lead another for you to ruff UDCA signallers will discard the 3 first then the 8 on the K.
8. Discarding Other Suits Standard signalling and UDCA only apply when you are following to a lead. What of discarding other suits (not trumping)? The system that we have adopted is the odd/even (O/E) system. There are many other systems but we feel O/E is the easiest to pick up and serves most purposes
9. O/E System Discarding an odd card encourages that suit Discarding a low even card encourages the lower of the 2 unplayed suits E.g. partner leads hearts and you discard 2 of spades. You are encouraging clubs (lower of the 2 unplayed suits, which are clubs and diamonds) Discarding a high even card encourages the higher of the 2 unplayed suits 6’s are ambiguous, though the meaning can usually be discerned by the presence of even cards in dummy/your own hand
