[Knurdler]

I am comfortable that, in the absence of an obvioous or classic lead, I should lead the suit my partner bid.
advinbridge.com suggests that if I did not support partner I give count (low = odd) and if I did support partner I give attitude (low = 1 honour).
This sounds clever, but is it an improvement on always giving attitude?

[mycroft]

If you have supported partner, it is likely that she knows the count - sometimes exactly, sometimes within a card (more), depending on how you supported and how the auction continued. So give attitude (what I've heard, and play, is "low from Qxx or better" - the idea being partner might even put you back in trick 2 for a lead through dummy).

If you haven't supported partner:

• Partner will almost always want to know how many cards declarer has. In trump, to know who can ruff: in NT, to work out how to best run their suit. And the misplay opportunity is often trick 1, so the information has to be immediate.
  
• If you have enough cards to support, and didn't, that passes *a lot* of information to partner, especially where there wasn't a huge jump (1♥-(1♠)-4♥ or (1♠)-5♦ or the like). That information, too, is very important (and less important to declarer, who can probably work it out from the extra points in his hand). Frequently, that information is "I don't have much, don't go looking for it" - voilá, attitude (if a bit "reverse attitude")!
  
• How often is there a situation where you have an opinion on attitude in partner's suit (or others) that isn't count-for-ruff?
  [Edit: It was pointed out to me that this may be too "mycroftese" and confusing. Let me try to clarify.
  If partner has bid a suit and you haven't raised, one of three things exists:
  • you don't have support. In which case, your "attitude" to the suit is "can I get a ruff"/"can you run the suit in NT" - both of which is count. Or you're Qx or Kx, but there you can't really "signal". Hopefully partner will figure out the location of the honours by the play.
    
  • you have support, but you don't have enough cards to bid. Now, you don't have an "attitude" - there's nothing what will aid you if partner switches (ok, a void I guess). Again, if you show count, and that count is "enough length to support", partner will figure out that that implies "and my hand is very bad, because I didn't". Now partner will be able to judge whether to switch or just keep playing the suit based on how many cards declarer has.
    
  • the auction got unreasonably high before you got to bid. This can be seen as a subcase of the previous (you don't have enough high cards to bid at the 4 level), but here you could have some useful values. This is a bit of a quandary, I admit; but it's a rare case, and even then, partner knowing how their suit is distributed will be a useful piece of information to them. So keeping it simple for right now will cost you less than many other uses of your time and system-brain energy.]

[blackshoe]

Many years ago, when I was being mentored by a local expert, he asked my to play attitude leads against NT. I agreed, but it turned out that I could not turn off my inclination to lead fourth best. After about four bad leads on my part, he decided it wasn't happening, and we went to fourth highest leads against NT. I still play that, and it still pisses me off that I was unable to change (that was nearly 30 years ago, so presumably my mind was a bit quicker then than now). The point being don't be afraid to try something new, and don't be afraid to go back to what you know if the experiment doesn't work out. That goes for bidding and play, btw.

[TylerE]

blackshoe, on 2024-January-17, 23:52, said:

Many years ago, when I was being mentored by a local expert, he asked my to play attitude leads against NT. I agreed, but it turned out that I could not turn off my inclination to lead fourth best. After about four bad leads on my part, he decided it wasn't happening, and we went to fourth highest leads against NT. I still play that, and it still pisses me off that I was unable to change (that was nearly 30 years ago, so presumably my mind was a bit quicker then than now). The point being don't be afraid to try something new, and don't be afraid to go back to what you know if the experiment doesn't work out. That goes for bidding and play, btw.

I have a very similar thing with UDCA. It is very much minority in my area, so it was never something I played in the early years, or even frequently encountered F2F. I absolutely *can* play it, and am happy to if it's partner's preference, but it's really not natural at all and something I have to very consciously think about, and I'll still probably space on it once a session or so.

The funny bit it is I have zero issue playing it online. My theory is that the action of using the mouse is different enough from physically pulling cards (and I also sort my hand mostly backwards F2F, e.g. honors on the right except usually the right most suit). Almost like a psychomotor thing more than purely mental.

I do think these sort of things are worth having open honest partnership discussions about, and that for most partnerships the right answer is probably going to lean closer to what's easier and less error prone than the theoretically best. Same reason I generally shy away these days from things like exotic ace asks - plain minorwood and kickback is about where I draw the line. I know it's fun to talk about fancy squeeze plays and killing defenses, but especially in club games but just getting through the session without making a simple cut and dried unforced error will probably win the event most days.

[DavidKok]

I currently play a very complicated set of leads and signals, and one of them is different rules for leading in partner's suit depending on how much support we've shown on the auction. We are experimenting with getting closer to this elusive 'theoretically best', accepting the complexity as part of the process. I suspect my partner is also at least in part suggesting this as a counterbalance to my passion for bidding agreements.

Personally I've played a lot of different leading and signaling agreements. I highly recommend practicing with different sets early. A lot of the local players here have played one and only one set of carding agreements for the last 20-50 years and simply cannot switch it up even if they would want to. I think it is worth trying to avoid that. When I was just starting out I played in three different partnerships simultaneously, all with different systems and carding agreements. This forced me to be flexible and think through the inferfences, skills that I think are valuable going forward.