[mike777]

strong 1c, on 2026-June-24, 15:32, said:

yes. I'm leading the low spot card too as there's 4 cards. So really, the only big difference I see between us comes back to the original question I posed. What to do with something like Q63 where you didn't support. It seems universal that leading the Q is not the right card and so this is really helpful for what I do. I think if I lead the middle (or 2ndbest) this will work. Partner will hopefully figure out that I have an odd count with one card higher.

The fact that you lead low from doubleton, Europe style makes the difference, otherwise this won't work.

Please be sure in ACBL land you tell the opponents you lead low from 92, many do not....expecting to gain..by confusing the opponents who very often are not experts.

[strong 1c]

Thanks. Peter and I don’t have that problem but it took us a while to get there . We have leads against Nt. Leads against suits and then leads of partners suit when he supported and when he did not. I don’t think those 4 breaks are all that uncommon

[strong 1c]

 mike777, on 2026-June-24, 15:50, said:

The fact that you lead low from doubleton, Europe style makes the difference, otherwise this won't work.

Please be sure in ACBL land you tell the opponents you lead low from 92, many do not....expecting to gain..

We only do that with partners suit and I think we have it on our convention chart. I’ll have to look. I think k we say Udca leads on partners suit with spot cards. Or something like thst

[mike777]

strong 1c, on 2026-June-24, 15:56, said:

We only do that with partners suit and I think we have it on our convention chart. I’ll have to look. I think k we say Udca leads on partners suit with spot cards. Or something like thst

that means nothing to people...you need to tell them from two small you lead low, not high....as I said it seems no one does tell people, so they trick them

tell them you lead low high from two cards, not high low....

[strong 1c]

mike777, on 2026-June-24, 17:43, said:

that means nothing to people...you need to tell them from two small you lead low, not high....as I said it seems no one does tell people, so they trick them

tell them you lead low high from two cards, not high low....

I think the card says Special Carding or something like that ? I dont know how one pre-alert their carding system

[mike777]

 strong 1c, on 2026-June-24, 17:50, said:

I think the card says Special Carding or something like that ? I dont know how one pre-alert their carding system

Same as you pre alert anything, takes two seconds or one second

[strong 1c]

mike777, on 2026-June-24, 18:01, said:

Same as you pre alert anything, takes two seconds or one second

"
"We do UDC when we lead a spot card to partners suit that we did not support" Quite a mouthful. Do I pre-alert that we do Journalist leads ( we do on-line). Do we pre-alert that we use Revolving discard ? ( we do online). I don't think any of this is necessary in face to face, but I am not a director. But we are getting a bit side tracked. This discussion has been very helpful as far as what we can do with Hxx when partners suit not supported.

[mike777]

From two small we lead low not high

Period

[strong 1c]

mike777, on 2026-June-24, 18:20, said:

From two small we lead low not high

Period

what about Q82 where we will lead 2nd ? (which is the information I wanted to get out of this thread, btw_

[mike777]

 strong 1c, on 2026-June-24, 18:30, said:

what about Q82 where we will lead 2nd ? (which is the information I wanted to get out of this thread, btw_

One second pre alert
If they want more info, and the vast majority will not, they can read your cc or ask

I prealert tfr over one club, unbalanced D


In team games, where you have a few more seconds I give a ten second review of my whole system
One club thru 2S, carding, signals



No one asks


How hard can it be to say we lead low from two small


But if no one complains don't bother..saying anything
..

End, smile

[strong 1c]

mike777, on 2026-June-24, 18:35, said:

One second pre alert
If they want more info, and the vast majority will not, they can read your cc or ask

I prealert tfr over one club, unbalanced D


In team games, where you have a few more seconds I give a ten second review of my whole system
One club thru 2S, carding, signals



No one asks


How hard can it be to say we lead low from two small


But if no one complains don't bother..saying anything
..

End, smile

I get your point, but When I rattle off 6 pre-alerts to some players.........

[mycroft]

• Carding pre-Alerts are no more (since 2019). Too many europeans, I guess :-). If you lead low from doubletons, and have it marked on your card, and have your card available, so be it.
  
• The people telling you to decouple "leading partner's suit" from everything else have a point and should be listened to. Whatever you decide to do is your own business, but most players' answer to "but count says" or "but attitude says" is "I'm leading partner's suit. It has its own rules. Specific overrides general."
  
• I'm one of them. I have a lot of rules that are "unless anything else applies, X" and this is one of those "anything else"s in my partnerships.
  
• I'm "traditional" about it, because I haven't seen anything that shows a serious downside to it/serious upside to anything else, and I need one to add yet another thing to "my weirdness". So:
  • From one, I lead low :-).
    
  • From two, I lead high - and yes, it cost me yesterday when partner's 2♦ overcall had some serious values (we set the contract anyway) but was ♦JTxxxx and my K from Kx pitched a trick.
    
  • From three, I lead low if I haven't supported (even from 543) and from Qxx or better if I have supported, high otherwise.
    
  • From four or more - I shouldn't have to tell partner the count :-).

[mikeh]

strong 1c, on 2026-June-24, 18:30, said:

what about Q82 where we will lead 2nd ? (which is the information I wanted to get out of this thread, btw_

My understanding is that low from xx is most popular in Poland. I’ve chatted at the table with Polish internationalists and they confirmed for me that from Q9x the ‘normal lead is the 9.

My main partner and I have been using low from xx for a couple of years, and find it very useful but we simply can’t see how 9 from Q9x, and similar, makes sense.

Yes, they want to avoid partner thinking the have a doubleton, but so what? They’d lead 8 from Q8x and from 98x, iirc, so it’s not that the 8 there would clarify things for partner. So we lead 3/5th from a suit headed by an honour and top from xxx.

So far we’ve had no misreading of the situation.

As for the OP, we’d obviously lead low from Qxx whether we’ve supported or not….we risk being thought to hold xx but partner sees dummy and listens to the auction so should go right more times than not.

[strong 1c]

mikeh, on 2026-June-25, 10:50, said:

My understanding is that low from xx is most popular in Poland. I’ve chatted at the table with Polish internationalists and they confirmed for me that from Q9x the ‘normal lead is the 9.

My main partner and I have been using low from xx for a couple of years, and find it very useful but we simply can’t see how 9 from Q9x, and similar, makes sense.

Yes, they want to avoid partner thinking the have a doubleton, but so what? They’d lead 8 from Q8x and from 98x, iirc, so it’s not that the 8 there would clarify things for partner. So we lead 3/5th from a suit headed by an honour and top from xxx.

So far we’ve had no misreading of the situation.

As for the OP, we’d obviously lead low from Qxx whether we’ve supported or not….we risk being thought to hold xx but partner sees dummy and listens to the auction so should go right more times than not.

My comment would be if my partner can know the total partnership count of his suit from my count lead of his suit, he will be better off than not knowing it. If leading 2nd from 3 he will not only (hopefully) know I have 3 cards but that I have exactly one card higher than the card I led.

( From Hx we lead H and with touching honors, we lead the higher one, as an aside)