Friday, September 16, 2005 6:58 AM

Switch Hitting

 

PITBULLS:

 

          In baseball , it pays to  be a switch hitter. I have been told that most leading experts at the world class level “switch hit” when it comes to opening leads. They play 3rd and 5th against suits and 4th best against NT. Against NT you rarely lead from 3 card suits and 4th best brings in the quite valuable “rule of eleven” . In NT you do not “burn” valuable spot cards by leading your second lowest from a 4 card holding Q983 . Not only is the 8 horribly hard to read ,  it may be the setting trick later on in a NT contract !

 

          In suit contracts , it is imperative especially in cash out situations to know the difference from 3 to an honour or 4 to an honour. When we have the AK on lead , we “switch hit” depending on whether we want count or attitude. What if partner opened and has the AK of her suit ?  Hands like this one occur time after time

 

                               ♠ AKQJ52

                               ♥ J73

                               ♦ 1086

                               ♣ 7                     

♠98                                              ♠1073

♥Q862                                         ♥ AK954

          ♦K932                                          ♦ AQJ4

          ♣ 962                                           ♣ K

 

                               ♠ 63

                               ♥ 10

                               ♦ 75

                               ♣ AQJ108543

 

          If partner by leading the heart deuce has 4 of them , we must cash one heart and two diamonds. If partner has 3 of them , we must cash 2 hearts and 1 diamond ( give west 5 diamonds) . Wrong order would be fatal.

 

          Declarer false carding causes “cash out” problems , unless the spots are just right. What if West has 62 of hearts and declarer has Q108  and false cards with the queen ?  Experts have devised a rule to get around this problem. As East can count the hearts between himself and dummy , he only plays the king from AK if the combined total is 9 or less. If more , he hides the king and wins the Ace instead. This clues East into the heart count. When partner switches to the diamond Ace , he will discourage with the King as he knows the heart will cash. If partner has a singleton heart , she will discourage in diamonds with the king wanting a heart ruff.  Switch hitting again !  Rather clever !

 

          Upside down count and attitude is another example of “switch hitting” . If you play standard signals like BJ Trelford and myself there are special circumstances where we should switch to upside down signaling. This action will be predicated on whether the dummy contains a finessible honour so you do not want to “burn your high spot cards” . Another example is if partner leads top of nothing so you do not want to waste spot cards also. Discarding should be upside down if you do not play another treatment like Roman discards. In all other situations normal signals are an advantage because of unblocking ( dummy has no high cards )  Some examples .

 

          ♦ A1073                                                                  ♦ A9753

♦Q                         ♦K94       top of nothing lead of ♦8                       ♦ KQ102   declarer plays Ace

 

          ♦ AJ5

♦Q                      ♦K1093

 

 

          There are many hands when there are no finessible cards in dummy that normal signals work better than upside down because they unblock the suit. if partner has led a short suit or top of nothing , normal signals are almost always wrong. If there are finessible cards in the dummy , standard signals are almost always wrong. If it is a known count situation i.e. you have bid the suit or shown a systemic count on the bidding we “ switch hit” to middle encourages so we can bring suit preference into play. A the life of the Bridge expert !