Contract Bridge

Over time, the suit-preference signal has taken on a much wider range of applications than it had in its original form, which in essence was to tell partner what suit to return after he had trumped a trick. Nowadays, the suit-preference signal can be used in a host of situations that do not necessarily involve a ruff by either defender. Consider this case from a team contest. Both North-South pairs reached four spades as shown, and both Wests led the heart ace.

At the first table, East played the heart four on the first trick, presumably to discourage another heart lead. West then tried the A-9 of diamonds, covered by the ten and jack. East had no way of knowing who had the missing four of diamonds (or that West was void in clubs), so he tried to cash the diamond king. South ruffed, drew trump and claimed.

At the other table, East got the defense started in the right direction by playing the ten of hearts on West’s ace at trick one. Since East had supported hearts during the bidding, the ten could hardly be a singleton or the top of a doubleton, so West construed it as a suit-preference signal indicating the desire for a diamond lead. West therefore placed East with the diamond king. West did not mechanically play the A-9 of diamonds, however. He realized that his partner couldn’t know he was void in clubs, nor would East be able to tell whether West had a third diamond. So at trick two, West led the four of diamonds!

Declarer played dummy’s ten, and when East’s jack held the trick, he stopped to ask himself why West had underled the diamond ace. There could only be one answer: West had a club void and did not want to run the risk of East misreading how the diamonds were distributed. So East returned a club, ruffed by West, and a second diamond lead to East’s king allowed West to ruff another club for down two and an 11-IMP pickup.