[Fluffy]

I've recomended to my partner that we start to play the following:

When discouraging (we do it with low, but would be the same or better with high), if we have a long suit and might pick different ones to discourage, we can use odd/even to show lavinthal preferences for a switch.

I think the good part about this agreement is that even if we forget, the important part of it: discourage, will remain true. And the information, althou not always trusty, will be more useful than nothing (similar to playing high low in trumps for suit preferencem sometimes you don't wanna signal anything but some info is better than no info)

do you see any drawbacks?
do you think it would be better to have a high/middle/low signal than high/low-even/low-odd?

[PhilKing]

The drawback is when you are dealt 108642 or K9753.

I believe this is still illegal in England and the ACBL. It was perceived that people just signalled slowly when they were dealt the wrong cards to give clarity.

[gnasher]

I think it's unwise to have a carding agremeent that you think you might forget.

High-middle-low seems technically better, because it's not affected by the actual cards held, and because you can weight the ranges of cards according to the importance of each message. For example, with five cards available to signal with, numbered 54321:

If attitude is more important than SP:
5 = encouraging
2 = discouraging, high SP
1 = discouraging, low SP

Or if they're equally important:
5 = encouraging
3 = discouraging, high SP
1 = discouraging, low SP

[Fluffy]

high-middle-low is obviously better when you want to be able to show the 3 things, but I was thinking along that the main goal is to discourage, then after compelling the main goal, in case we can distiguish, we can do lavinthal at the same time.

The meaning I am looking for is this: I don't want you to continue this suit, and in case I have different cards to pick from to tell you so, I wold prefer clubs to hearts.

[inquiry]

Dual meaning carding is illegal in the ACBL, with the exception of first discard (which can be odd even, where even is discouraging and size of even card is S/P).

There is a legal way to signal both discouraging and suit preference that is fairly standard and is legal. The standard way to do this, as you probably know, is that from a known long suit a low card is s/p for a lower suit, a high card is s/p for a higher, and a middle size card is s/p for the suit being played. This is fairly common agreement, and works well for six card suits, and can get a little fuzzy for five card suits. I use if for presumed six card (plus) suits only. Of course when a shift is going to be obvious, you can use high/low as suit preference regardless of suit length.

[Fluffy]

inquiry, on 2013-February-15, 09:34, said:

Dual meaning carding is illegal in the ACBL, with the exception of first discard (which can be odd even, where even is discouraging and size of even card is S/P).

I know I am going to destroy my own thread by asking, but what kind of twisted mind could find a reason to invent such a random rule?

[gnasher]

Fluffy, on 2013-February-15, 08:19, said:

high-middle-low is obviously better when you want to be able to show the 3 things, but I was thinking along that the main goal is to discourage, then after compelling the main goal, in case we can distiguish, we can do lavinthal at the same time.

The meaning I am looking for is this: I don't want you to continue this suit, and in case I have different cards to pick from to tell you so, I wold prefer clubs to hearts.

Suppose that, for a given suit length, you have a rule for what constitutes a discouraging card. That might be "my lowest n cards" or "any card below an m" - whichever you think makes most sense.

Using that set of discouraging cards, there are two ways that you can give secondary suit preference signals:
(1) Use the parity to signal suit-preference, hoping that you have a card of the right parity. If you don't have the right card, signal for the wrong suit.
(2) Play the highest for the higher suit and the lowest for the lower suit.

Isn't (2) obviously better than (1)?

[Fluffy]

yes, but higher of my lower n cards is gonna be ambiguous so often. If the problem is that you might have no odd or even cards for something, the usual rules of 2 being more 'even' than the 6 apply.
Its not like odd/even is safe from ambiguity, but it makes me feel safer. I mean, if I only played that it applies on the case where we are discouraging and have the 2 and the 3 (or 3 and 4 if 2 is visble..), then we would never lose against standard (except having HH32 maybe). And once in a while we will have a guide in case the suit to switch is not obvious. Perhaps it is a very conservative approach.

[Fluffy]

But I think Phil raises an important issue, unless we are able to implement your approach of always hesitating at trick one before playing to it this agreement is leading to many UI situations.