Suit Preference Signals
There is one final type of signal and I use it a lot. It is called a suit preference signal and yes, it is used to show what suit you prefer. One very common use of this signal occurs when you are giving partner a ruff. Suppose partner leads his singleton. You can win the ace and lead back a card for partner to trump. After partner trumps it he is going to know how to get back to your hand for another ruff or at least what suit you want lead even when you don’t have a quick entry.
We start out with four suits: one is the trump suit so lets eliminate that for now, the second is the suit partner is ruffing and that leaves two others. So if you return a high one you want the higher of the two remaining suits led and if you return a low one you want the lower of the two remaining suits led. Here is an example:
Dummy Q1098 Q105 K1098 K9 |
||
| Colin My Son 76 3 J6532 J5432 |
Linda J2 A9842 A7 Q1086 |
|
| Opponent About To Be Sad And Sorry AK543 KJ76 Q4 A7 |
South opened the bidding with 1
. Colin was too weak to bid unusual notrump even though he did have 5-5 in the minors so he passed. North had about 11 dummy points and so made a limit raise (3
). I passed and South was good enough for game and bid 4
. Now Colin led a heart and I won the A Colin could have the K but he is also quite likely to have a singleton. To cater to this possibility I return a heart but which one? There are two suits for Colin to chose from, the two minor suits. There is no way for him to know which ace I have (if I indeed have one) except … I return the 
9 telling him I want the higher of the two remaining suits. Now he returns a diamond and I can give him another heart ruff. A defensive crossruff always feels sooo good.
Suit preference signals can be used in some other cases too although they are not as common as count or attitude signals. Suppose that you are following while declarer plays off a suit in a trump contract. You would like to tell partner which of the other two suits you prefer. But since you are following you cannot play an attitude card. You can use the order that you play your cards as a suit preference signal. So if declarer is playing clubs and you want spades and not hearts you follow with a high club and then a low club. If you want hearts you play a low club and then a high club.
In fact some people have their card marked trump suit preference signals. When declarer draws trump, if they can do so safely they play a high trump first to suggest they prefer a high ranking suit and a low trump if they prefer a low ranking suit.
One of the disadvantages of suit preference signals is that they can only distinguish between two suits and in many cases three suits may be possibilities. Some people play a method of signaling where they can tell partner about three suits all at once. These methods have names like Lavinthal and Odd-even. The main idea is that using the rank (high or low) or parity (odd or even) to send a message about which suit they like.
If you would like to know more about these more complex methods of discarding then follow this link.
There are many time where you just don’t know what to do on defense just looking at your hand and dummy’s (and listening to the auction of course). So partner’s signals are a critical aid to helping you out.
Thanks to a readers who pointed out errors in the previous post which have now been corrected. All help is welcome!