[cherdanno]

I just read an old bridge world article by Anders Wirgren where he introduced the concept of scanian signals.
The idea seems very sound to me, and might be an improvement over both upside-down and standard at maybe one hand per session. Anyone actually using them?

Let me explain the idea briefly, just for the trick one signal:
1. When you haven't shown length in the suit, and dummy has no honors, you play standard signals.
2. When you have shown length, or when there are "finessable" honors in dummy, you play ud.

The first rule will solve typical ud problems, e.g. when partner leads the systemic honor from AK againt NT and you have QT2 (you want to encourage, but you also want to unblock), or he leads A against a suit contract, there is 983 in dummy and you have JT2. The second is one of the typical "udca is better" situations, as from length you can almost always afford a high card if you want to discourage, but you can't always afford a high card if you want to encourage.

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

I just read an old bridge world article by Anders Wirgren where he introduced the concept of scanian signals.
The idea seems very sound to me, and might be an improvement over both upside-down and standard at maybe one hand per session. Anyone actually using them?

I've used them before. Yes I think it's theoretically better. But I think it's much less than one hand per session where it actually makes a difference.

[nonsense deleted, didn't read post carefully]

[xcurt]

This has probably also been dealth with before, here, but this is pretty clearly not GCC-legal. There is a clause in there forbidding dynamic ordering strategies, mainly to ban encrypted signals, I think, but it also catches this.

Note that this clause doesn't ban parity-type signals (because your ordering is static) so you can sometimes achieve encryption (not the benefit you were looking for in your original post) when declarer's parity is known from the auction.

[Stephen Tu]

They are definitely GCC legal! There is nothing there about dynamic ordering, just that you have to use right-side up or upside-down ordering, which this is. The ban is mainly to prevent people from using odd-even signaling, or something totally bizarre.

There is nothing encrypted about them, it is based on dummy's holding & the bidding, there is nothing hidden from the declaring side, if they ask you just tell them whether the signal is std or upside down for this hand. Nor are they dual-message, since it is only an attitude signal, not both attitude & suit preference.