How to Communicate With Your Partner in Defence Part II ♦

Missed part I? Find it here.

In part I we saw how you can give information to your partner with the honour cards that you play. You can also pass a message to your defensive partner with the small cards you play as well. This is only when you are not trying to win the trick which can be either because you can’t beat the declarer’s current card or because your partner is already winning the trick. Giving your partner a message with a small card is known as ‘defensive signalling’ as you are signalling something to your partner.

There are hundreds, probably even thousands, of different ways to play defensive signals but the vast majority of these methods work on a basis known as ‘attitude signals’. Attitude signals are a way of telling your partner your attitude towards a given suit, ie if you like or dislike a suit. There is a another common method known as ‘count signals’ where you tell your partner the quantity of cards you have in a suit rather than your like/dislike for the suit but this signalling agreement is quite tricky to get your head round (a video on count signals here) so I am going to focus on attitude signals for this article.

Attitude signals are a useful way to tell your partner if you like their lead or not even if you cannot contribute to winning this particular trick, but you need to agree a way in which you will signal. Does a high card indicate you like the lead, or does a small card indicate liking for the suit? What about odd or even, perhaps you could even distinguish between like and dislike this way instead?

Well the answer is you can basically agree anything you like with your partner, after all it is them who you will be signalling to! The most frequent agreements are known as ‘standard attitude’ and ‘reverse attitude’ and they are as follows:

Playing standard attitude signals, a high card encourages, a low card discourages

There is a helpful acronym for standard attitude signals which is H.E.L.D. and this stands for High Encouraging Low Discouraging.

Predictably:

Playing reverse attitude signals, a low card encourages, a high card discourages

The helpful mnemonic for this method is Low Like High Hate (LLHH).

I personally prefer reverse attitude signals, as I like keeping my high cards in suits I like, but both systems work perfectly fine. These small card signals can be used when following to a trick or if you are discarding. Sometimes partnerships will play different signals when they are following suit and when they are discarding but I think for simplicity it is best to keep your signalling methods the same throughout so you know what your partner is trying to show you when they play a small card.

It is very important to note that:

You only ever give an attitude signal when your side leads or if you are discarding and NOT when declarer leads a suit

This is because an attitude signal is relevant for the cards you hold in that suit. The declarer is typically interested in the suits they lead, and the defence is normally more interested in the suits they have led. This is important because you could accidentally give the declarer information about a suit they care about, so they learn where a certain card is that they were looking for.

There are two really key times when attitude signalling occurs, and they are when your partner leads an honour (that you don’t want to overtake) and when you make your first discard.

Imagine this suit layout against a contract of say 3♦:

Our partner leads the ♥A and we want to encourage them to keep playing hearts because we have the ♥Q (remember their lead of the A promises the K). Depending on your signalling system you would play either the ♥10 (playing HELD) to encourage or the ♥2 (playing LLHH) and assuming your partner read your signal correctly they would continue to play hearts.

Change the suit layout to:

Do you want to encourage here or discourage? Well partner will have led the ♥K promising the ♥Q and denying the ♥A so you know declarer is about to win this trick but that doesn’t mean this suit is irrelevant for future tricks. With the ♥J I would encourage partner’s lead as this is still a useful card even though declarer is about to win this trick. Therefore, with a K lead you want to encourage with either the A or the J.

Let’s try one more, imagine this time you are defending 4♠:

We don’t have the ♦Q so we should discourage right? Wrong! Here we have something that is almost as good, if not as good as the missing ♦Q and that is shortage. We want our partner to continue diamonds because after the ♦AK we will be able to ruff the third round. So playing with my partner I would play the ♦3 on their lead of the ♦A which is ‘low like’. Note that you only ever encourage with shortage when your are playing against a trump contract (obviously!).

All of the above examples lead us to another key statement:

On an honour lead from partner you encourage with a ‘surrounding honour’ (either above or below) – specifically on an Ace lead you encourage with shortage (against trumps) or with the Queen

You can also encourage/discourage on a small card lead by your partner as follows. This time you are defending 2♥, let’s say:

Here you partner led a small club (low from an honour) and the declarer immediately took the ♣A on dummy. The card you play on underneath the ♣A is also an attitude signal albeit your partner won’t be on lead to the next trick. Here we would encourage clubs so I would play the ♣2 as ‘low like’ but others might play the ♣7 as ‘high to encourage’ – whatever floats your boat.

In part III we will take a look at signalling when you are not following suit, ie a discard signal.

For part III click here