Posted 2007-July-06, 21:29
This still has me bothered, this Smith echo business.
Back in 1993-1994, I partnered a young kid for a while while I was in the D.C. area who was quite a good new player. He seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, but he was friends with some younger players some of you may know.
Anyway, we discussed defensive carding. Our agreement was either standard or upside-down, cannot remember. But, the key was that we agreed to play the right card.
That may sound wildly simplistic, but it was actually quite complicated, in a sense. The idea was that there are three basic signals -- count, attitude, and suit-prefernce, or so the ACBL convention card tells us. We'll forget the really strange stuff, like Prism signals.
Some carding carries dual messages, like Lavinthal (positive attitude for one suit, negative for another) or the Blue Peter (count for two suits simultaneuously), but, to make things simple, three basic signals.
Some folks play a card according to a rule. A pitch is usually attitude. A switch is usually attitude. You play suit-preference in a suit that is stiff on dummy. Whatever.
We played "the right card." The way you handled this was to look at the deal and empathize partner's issue(s). He will likely have one. If he needs suit preference, give suit preference. If he needs count, give count. If he needs attitude, give attitude. That also seems simple. It gets more interesting.
Suppose that partner's "issue" is count in diamonds. I'd give count in diamonds. However, I might not have the luxury of playing diamonds to do that. I might have to use clubs for that purpose.
A simple example. Dummy has KQJxxx in clubs, with no entry, but Declarer is on dummy. I can tell that partner will want to know how many times, if ever, to duck his Ace of clubs. How I "know" that is unimportant -- trust that I do. Suppose further that partner's decision will be to duck once or to not duck at all. I'm trying to make this simple, so just trust that also. So, he leads a diamond toward his hand. If I hold an even number of clubs, I give count in diamonds for "even," regardless of my diamond count. If odd, odd.
A Smith Echo is a pre-arranged agreement of that type. We have pre-agreed to show attitude for X suit when Y suit is played. Nothing strange here. This is simply a pre-determined recurring example of the "right card" principle. (BTW, the kid was amazing at this.) So is, in a lesser and less reliable sense, a "blue peter" or a Lavinthal Discard. BTW -- A Lavinthal Discard is made by lots of people even without discussion, as a "right card" defense, like a suit-preference signal when you underlead AKQxxxx hoping to hit partner for a void-suit return or when you use a pip in that suit to give suit-preference for the other two suits in a who-saves-what squeeze position.
Anyway, I cannot imagine that the bridge authorities would bar people from playing "the right card defense." That would be completely unbelievable. Agreeing to play Smith, or to play Lavinthal, or to play standard signals is simply a predetermination as to what card you believe to most frequently be "the right card" so you do not have to work out the real-world problem that partner has, possibly because you are not good enough to do that or possibly because you believe that the likelihood of being able to read a situation accurately is lower than the likelihood that a predetermined structure will be right, or that certainty pays more than flexibility. Whatever.
The point is that a "Smith Echo" can be an agreement or it can flow from circumstance logic. The exceptions to a Smith default are essentially "right card" thinking.
I'm rambling, but I'm sure y'all understand what I'm saying, I hope.
"Gibberish in, gibberish out. A trial judge, three sets of lawyers, and now three appellate judges cannot agree on what this law means. And we ask police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and citizens to enforce or abide by it? The legislature continues to write unreadable statutes. Gibberish should not be enforced as law."
-P.J. Painter.
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