1. Your First Discard In Bridge, there are only two legal ways to communicate with your partner:- 1. The bids you make, and 2. The cards you play. Here we will discus your First Discard. Your First Discard is the card that you play the first time that you cannot follow suit. This first discard should be meaningful. Your partner MUST WATCH FOR IT.

2. Simple Discards Discard the card that is of least use in your hand. This should indicate to partner you have no interest in that suit and leaves partner having to guess if you actually have any values worth mentioning in any other suit. or Just discard a large card from your suit of interest. This is better as it shows partner a suit that you have some values in. But this has the very negative result that you have thrown away a card from your best suit. Not really smart when you think about it.

3. How About? How about you discard a useless card from your hand and at the same time show which suit, if any, that you do have an interest in. In general terms, this is called a “suit-preference” discard. This tells partner two things:- 1. You have no interest in the suit of your discard. Usually this is useful information for partner. 2. The size (spot-count) of your discard shows which suit that you do have some values in. That is much more useful info for partner.

4. Revolving Discards My favourite suit-preference discard convention is Revolving Discards which I affectionately refer to as “Revolting” Discards. Think of the suits being arranged around a circle in suit-rank order. Clubs first, then Diamonds, followed by Hearts and then Spades completing the circle in increasing- rank order. Now, continuing around from Spades, we come to Clubs again. Clubs is the next higher- ranking suit to Spades!

5. Descending Rank Order Traversing the circle of suits in reverse, descending order, we get Spades with Hearts lower, then Diamonds and then the lowly Clubs. Continuing in descending order, we get Spades next lower-ranking to Clubs. This is a very important concept in revolving discards.

6. 12 6 9 3 11 10 ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 1 2 4 5 7 8 It is easy to see that in increasing hours, they go 11, 12, 1, 2 … Going anticlockwise, we get 2, 1, Then 12, 11. Similarly for revolving discards. Increasing order, we get ♠, ♣, ♦, ♥ and descending order we have ♣, ♠, ♥, ♦

7. Your First Discard Choose a card from your useless suit or one of your useless suits if you have 2 or more. Discard a low card (2, 3, or 4) to show an interest in the next lower-ranking suit. Discard a higher card (8, 9 or T) to show your interest in the next higher-ranking suit. Interestingly, you can clearly show partner that you are useless by discarding a “nothing-card” (5, 6 or 7). This is often good information for partner.

8. Which Card? You are discarding, you do not have any cards in the suit that was lead so you choose another suit. We treat the suit lead as if it was a blank on our imaginary suit-clock. There are only THREE (3) suits for you and PARTNER to consider, when you discard. The suit that you discard has just one and only one next-lower suit and exactly one next- higher suit to choose. This is the basic strength of REVOLVING DISCARDS and makes it superior to other suit-preference discard conventions. There should never be any partnership confusion with the meaning of your first discard.

9. An Example You are defending against 4 Spades. Declarer wins the opening lead and then cashes ♠AK to which you follow suit. Now a third Spade is led and you hold ♥ 972 ♦ KQT73 ♣ 86 Which card do you discard to show that you have some useful cards in Diamonds?

10. You are discarding to a ♠ lead and you hold... ♥ 972 ♦ KQT73 ♣ 86 You have the choice of 2 First Discards. The ♥2 clearly indicates your preference for the next lower ranking suit ♦. The ♣8 shows your preference for the next higher ranking suit ♦. Revolving Discards are great. You will very rarely not have a clear signal card and frequently you will have a choice.

11. Next Example A No-Trump contract and there have been three rounds of Hearts to which you have followed suit, and now a 4 th Heart is lead. You now hold ♠ QJT6 ♦ KJ97 ♣ 83 Which Club do you discard? The ♣8 shows your preference for the next higher ranking suit (♦) and the ♣3 shows the next lower ranking suit (♠).

12. It depends on what Diamonds are in dummy and where you sit in relation to dummy. Suppose that dummy is on your right and contains ♦A and/or ♦Q, then you definitely do want partner to lead Diamonds through these to your strength. Discard the ♣8 showing that you prefer the next higher suit. If dummy is on your left and contains these cards then you do not want partner to lead a Diamond, so discard the ♣3 to indicate a preference for the safe Spades. Remember, ♠ are next lower to ♣. With dummy on your left and not containing any significant Diamonds, you do want partner to lead Diamonds.

13. That's All For Now All this revolving has made me dizzy.