Signals

Signals are often the difference between beating a contract and not; used correctly, they're invaluable. There are a few important decisions to make with them:

  1. Which signals will your partnership use?
  2. When do they apply? A big source of confusion is the two players being on a different page about which signal is being given — one might be giving count while the other reads it as attitude about a suit. Having crystal-clear, consistent rules around this is essential.
  3. Keep it simple; don't overdo it. One or two simple but reliable signals will often achieve the goal.

Modern partnerships are building a lot of suit preference into their signalling — the play of irrelevant pips can be made to carry rich information. But, as always, keep it simple and don't overdo it, especially at the intermediate stage: one or two signals per hand will be sufficient.

Practise signals in the trainer
Interactive practice hands

Work through it

  1. 1
    Bridge Signals and DiscardsFundamentals
  2. 2
    Odds and Evens Discarding in Bridge: Should You Play It?Fundamentals
  3. 3
    Suit preference signals and discardsAdvanced
  4. 4
    UDCA signals and discardsAdvanced
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