Bridge - The Scotsman 15/08/2012

West led the six of hearts against 3NT. Dummy’s ten scored, and declarer continued with the jack of hearts from dummy. What should East discard? East sees 22 points between his hand and dummy. Declarer has 12-14, leaving just 4-6 for partner. Presumably partner has the ace or king of hearts, but when he wins it declarer will have established three heart tricks to go with five diamonds and, probably, two spades. East must use his discarding opportunity to persuade partner to switch to a club. Some players advocate McKenney-style suit preference discards, and they might work well here. There are, however, disadvantages to discarding methods where every card has meaning. How would you cope playing natural discards, where a high card encourages and a low card discourages? A low diamond would tell partner that you do not have the queen – but then he might switch to a spade. A low spade is discouraging, but then partner might place you with good diamonds and go passive.

Partner will never believe that you have such a solid club suit unless you tell him by discarding the ace of clubs! Such a flashy honour discard should be top of a solid, running holding. Here it costs a trick, but does guarantee that the contract will go down.

If you had a solid major you might double 3NT, a lead-directing double that traditionally asks partner to lead his weaker major. Such a double is unlikely to work when your solid suit is a minor.