[jillybean]

What are your partnership agreements when leading from a useless 3 card suit?

What would you lead in a casual partnership?
Middle-Up-Down seems most popular but creates confusion when one partner thinks Middle is low from a honor. Top of nothing creates confusion when the 2nd card in the suit is played.

[jtfanclub]

High in NT
MUD when it's an unbid suit
High when it's partner's suit and I have supported it*
Low when it's partner's suit and I have not supported it*

*the logic being, I will almost always support with 3 to an honor and almost never support with a small doubleton. So if I supported and lead high, it must be 3 nothing, and if I didn't support and lead low, it must be 3 nothing.

[pclayton]

Low vs Suits (unless we raised) and High vs NT.

Many still play high from suits though.

[jtfanclub]

jillybean2, on Mar 25 2008, 09:01 AM, said:

Middle-Up-Down seems most popular but creates confusion when one partner thinks Middle is low from a honor.

Sorry to double-post....

I like the confusion in a suit contract when my partner has not bid the led suit. I think that knowing the distribution of the suit is more useful to declarer than it is to partner.

Let me give an example from another thread, with the other suits being immaterial.
South leading a heart at 4♠.

---

---

If my lead is unquestionably a doubleton, the opponents should finesse me for the queen of trumps. If it's unquestionably from 3 or more, they should play for the drop. If it's unclear...well, now they have to think for a while, and they may very well get it wrong. Meanwhile, it's most likely completely worthless to partner to know how many hearts I have. If he needs to know later, I'll tell him later...after the trumps are played.

[han]

Jlall, on Mar 25 2008, 09:02 AM, said:

High from xxx against NT and low from xxx vs suits.

Ditto, standard in North American imo.

PClayton said:

(unless we raised)

Yes

[cherdano]

MUD is not standard.

[paulg]

In Scotland all club players play MUD against suits. Many mistakenly play it in partner's suit too, but this is through ignorance.

Against notrump then some lead highest.

I expect England is the same.

Paul

[brianshark]

I don't really know what standard is, though I usually lead the middle from xxx in all situations if undiscussed. Maybe I shouldn't?

As for what's best, well in my experience, it seems you just need to know what suit combinations partner can and can't have led from and use clues from elsewhere to decide which one. I don't think any set of agreements is technically superior to any other, it just shuffles which situations are easy/hard to distinguish?

[skjaeran]

I prefer to lead 3rd/5th vs suit contracts. Then I lead lowest from xxx.

In NT I prefer 3rd/5th from strength else 2nd (or highest). From xxx I lead the highest of 2nd depending on which spots I've got. 7 from 97x, 5 from 543.

With my most regular partner we lead 3rd/5th in partners suit only (vs NT and suit), 2nd/4th else. vs NT in an unbid (by partner) suit what I wrote about leads from xxx above apply.

[P_Marlowe]

We play 2nd/4th against NT, this means you play
Middle - Down - Up instead of Middle - Up - Down,

You may combine this with attitude, if you lead 2nd
from 4 worthless, and 4th from a suit headed by an
honor, but it surely is better to start with the simpler
version, which is strictly length based.

Against suit contracts we play 3rd / 5th, but 2nd / 4th
will work fine as well, the advantage being, that you
lead the same against NT and suit, which will help you
learn to read the lead (the most important thing),
and it is not that far away from standard.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: I voted MUD, you should have added other ...

[Cascade]

han, on Mar 26 2008, 04:53 AM, said:

Jlall, on Mar 25 2008, 09:02 AM, said:

High from xxx against NT and low from xxx vs suits.

Ditto, standard in North American imo.

PClayton said:

(unless we raised)

Yes

Low from three small if we play fourths seems very confusing.

For this reason I prefer 3rds and 5ths against suits.

I prefer 4ths against no trumps but do not often get to play that.

With 3rds and 5ths I just lead low from three small whatever the contract unless I have raised when i might lead top or 2nd.

With fourths I would lead top or 2nd whichever is least confusing.

As an aside last night I had ♥ 6432 and decided to lead this suit against 3NT. Playing fourths from an honour I wasn't at all sure what was best. I was worried that 432 would all look like i had an honour. And the six was the only card in the suit that I had that could beat anything - wouldn't you hate it if declarer had AKQ5 or something and the six gave the entire suit.

[the hog]

Prefer high from xxx and low from xx, but that is not standard.
Mud is standard in Australia.