[akhare]

It's a combination of Vinje leads with some other interesting ideas and was reviewed in April 2004 Bridge World.

Has anyone read the review or has had experience with the described methods? From what I can tell, the HERO leads (High from Even, Rusinow from Odd) played by csgibson is very similar to what's described in the book.

http://www.bridgeguy...nati_leads.html

[CSGibson]

akhare, on 2012-May-31, 14:23, said:

It's a combination of Vinje leads with some other interesting ideas and was reviewed in April 2004 Bridge World.

Has anyone read the review or has had experience with the described methods? From what I can tell, the HERO leads (High from Even, Rusinow from Odd) played by csgibson is very similar to what's described in the book.

http://www.bridgeguy...nati_leads.html

What I play is in no way similar to what is described, and I wouldn't recommend HERO leads in any normal context either - it works for us only because we systemically do not give count more than once except on extraordinary hands, making accurate count on the opening lead important in figuring out the hand.

[SteveMoe]

Have had the pleasure of playing against Jerry and Joe here (Cincinnati Bridge Association Unit 124) for several years. They played an interesting American Forcing Minor bidding system too - both 1♣ and 1♦ are artificial and forcing, with 4-card majors. Jerry has "retired" from the game but I do see Joe playing with his wife weekly. They both played these leads for years before publishing.

I know that they were required to provide detailed pre-alerts (low from a singleton, count coded honor cards, etc). My recollection (spotty) was that the odd-even parity of the honor card indicated the parity of the number of cards in the suit - 10, Q, and A are even. No other player in Cincinnati has adopted this approach and it has disappeared from view here. I have never gotten a partner to try. The number of changes and departures from convenient tools (rule of 12 no longer applies) hinders adoption especially for casual partnerships. The real benefit is having honor sequence and length parity known at the 1st trick, and to a lesser degree, upside down signals are preserved even for the opening lead card. Larry and Joe were often able to count out partner's hand a trick or two earlier than most.

Slawinski leads appear as useful and are a bit easier to adopt because they do not have as many different context-driven rules.

Most here have adopted a fairly standard/portable approach - NT:4th best and Suits: 3rd and 5th (or lowest) & upside down attitude spot card leads. We're even beginning to see European style honor card signal asks.

Paraphrasing Mark Twain: "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything happens 10 years later there."