[hutchau]

As an "old fashioned" experienced player ,I am being asked to play udca with odd/even discards.and 3/5th leads
Each of these on their own are relatively simple but tying them together isnt clearcut.Perhaps someone can clarify these points for me.
[1]LEADS....from odd do we always lead lowest? From 7card suit...Low? or 5th?If you have KNOWN length & lead 3rd when holding 5+, does this have some special meaning?
from even do we always lead 3rd best or can 5th best be led?
what is led from KT92?? T or 9?
[2]SIGNALS..playing o/e discards with udca,
you discard 2H on spades...Is this a positive signal in hearts or clubs?
Does it depend on whether a suit or NT is being played?
Perhaps someone can point me to a reference to some of this stuff?

[paulg]

As another experienced player I can say what I would expect .... but it may vary by nationality ...

hutchau, on Jan 30 2005, 04:44 AM, said:

As an "old fashioned" experienced player ,I am being asked to play udca with odd/even discards.and 3/5th leads
Each of these on their own are relatively simple but tying them together isnt clearcut.Perhaps someone can clarify these points for me.

[1]LEADS....from odd do we always lead lowest? From 7card suit...Low? or 5th?If you have KNOWN length & lead 3rd when holding 5+, does this have some special meaning?

I always lead lowest odd card ... and it would mean something if I did not but I have no idea what! Yet to happen

from even do we always lead 3rd best or can 5th best be led?

Again I'd lead 5th from 6.

what is led from KT92?? T or 9?

I do not regard this as a 3/5 question but a question of my honour lead style. Being old fashioned I'd lead the 10. Many other play "strong 10s", where the lead of the 10 shows 0 or 2 higher honours and so would lead the 9. I believe Roman and Journalist leaders would also lead the 9.

But I would argue that 10 is standard!

[2]SIGNALS..playing o/e discards with udca,
you discard 2H on spades...Is this a positive signal in hearts or clubs?

Clubs.

Does it depend on whether a suit or NT is being played?

Not for me.

[Winstonm]

My understanding and what I use when I describe 3/5 is actually 3rd and low. It is a count type lead. Third best from an even number of cards, 4, 6, 8, and low from an odd number, 3, 5, 7. That means you would lead low from 873 as well as Q8642. From K109x you lead whatever is agreed on, and occasionally may have to lie and lead low from 4.

UDCA was born on the simple idea that in attitude situations it is better to save your high cards if you have a decent holding than to confuse partner with the 3 from Q1032. It really does make better sense than so-called Standard methods. It is used as an attitude signal to the opening lead and when giving count.

Odd/Even is a discarding method to show like/don't like in an outside suit.

Putting it all together in my methods. 3rd and low. Upside Down attitude to opening lead and when giving Count. Second of touching honors from an interior sequence. Lead of J denies a higher honor.

Although I do not use them, my understanding is: Odd/Even when discarding to show preference for suit discarded from.

Official Encyclopedia of Bridge is a pretty good reference for a number of bridge topics, although few are covered in any great depth.

Hope this helps.

[kgr]

I play 3/5 and UDCA with O/E discards; 4th best against NT:
- Lead 3th or 5th best. 7th from a seven card against suit contract (but I don't expect that this will ever happen. I will play top of serie).
- Lead 4th best against NT.
But only if I want to play low. Eg: On BBO I have seen lead against NT from KQT72 and they lead the 7. In this case I will lead the K. (If the J is not in dummy then partner knows that he can take over with the A and return the suit).
If I supported partner during the bidding and we defend then he knows I have a 3 card in his suit. In this case a lead attitude (high without honour).
Difficult lead is from 3-small (eg 762). I don't like to lead the 2 in this case. But that comes probably from the fact that we used attitude leads before.
When partner plays a suit then I signal UDCA-attitude (low to encourage); expect when it is clear that I can't have anything in the suit then we signal UDCA-count.
When partner leads the King then I signal UDCA-count (low with even count).
When opps play a suit then we signal UDCA-count (low with even count).

When discarding we signal o/e:
- odd asks the suit. (small odd is more encouraging then high odd!)
- small even asks lower suit and high even asks higher suit.
- signal with odd card takes preference to signal with even card and signal with low odd takes preference over signal with high odd. Eg: First discard Club 5 then club 3 does indicate signal problem and does not ask clubs.

Question: What are the agreements about?: Against NT contract partne plays H. you take Heart A and want to return H.
What do you return from and what does it show?:
A32
A432
A5432
Is it impacted by the leads and signals you use?

[Free]

hutchau, on Jan 30 2005, 05:44 AM, said:

I am being asked to play udca with odd/even discards.and 3/5th leads

Imo, this means following:

- you lead 3/5th card in any situation (unless sequences of honours ofcourse)
- when you can't follow a suit, you discard O/E
- in other situations where you need to signal, use UDCA

I don't think there's any confusion here. You usually have 3 components: leads, discards, and other signals.

[luke warm]

i might be wrong here but i think journalist leads are still the best... the only drawback to them, as far as i can tell, is they might be *too* good (meaning an expert declarer can tell more from the lead than a non-expert partner)

i lead the lowest from odd (5+) and 3rd from even, usually... at the moment we play o/e on first discard, but i'm not real sure this has any advantage given obvious shift methods

[Flame]

Just try to think about each of them individually and not mix them.
Leads : when you are going to lead a small card lead your 5 if you have 5 or more cards when you have 3 or 4 cards you lead the 3rd (oviously you cant lead the 5th)
This is only about small card leads, with K109x you will lead the 10 unless you agreed otherwise.
Signaling: Dont mix between two kinds of signaling, when you follow a suit you play udca, when you dont have that suit, you discards and you do this odd/even way, meaning if you discard an odd card it mean you want the suit, if you discard an even card it mean you dont want the suit if that even card was low you want a lower suit (and not the one you discard from) if it was high even you want the higher suit.
So the 2H over a spade mean you dont want heart, you want a low suit(this will usually mean clubs)