Emergency Signal

When taker is playing his first suit and giver pitches a card on it, the situation is setup for the emergency signal. Since the giver will continue pitching the suit she has pitched until she is out, the giver will come down to one of the other two suits. If the taker has one of these two suits blocked from the bottom he will play the other one from the bottom up.

	taker		giver
$\spadesuit$	A J 5 4		-
$\heartsuit$	Q 8 6		J 9 7 4
$\diamondsuit$	K 4		8 5
$\clubsuit$	2		5 4 3
	fig. 9

	taker		giver
1	$\spadesuit$A		$\diamondsuit$8
2	$\heartsuit$6		$\heartsuit$4
3	$\heartsuit$8		$\heartsuit$7
4	$\heartsuit$Q		$\heartsuit$J
5	$\spadesuit$J		...

When taker sees the $\diamondsuit$8 at trick one, he knows that giver will come down to either hearts or clubs. Since taker has clubs blocked from the bottom, he must immediately tell giver to hold onto her hearts. He does this by playing his hearts from the bottom up.

The emergency signal can help the giver to select the best line of play. If no emergency signal is played giver knows that neither of the taker's other two suits are blocked from the bottom. This can assist the giver in selecting the correct line as well.

	taker		giver
$\spadesuit$	A J 5 4		-
$\heartsuit$	Q 5 4		8 7 6 2
$\diamondsuit$	K 4		8 5
$\clubsuit$	6		7 5 3
	fig. 10

	taker		giver
1	$\spadesuit$A		$\diamondsuit$8
2	$\spadesuit$J		...

At this point the giver would normally choose to throw her clubs and come down to her hearts (since the taker would have the $\clubsuit$2 24% of the time but would have two or more of $\heartsuit$3, $\heartsuit$4, and $\heartsuit$5 only 13% of the time). However, this all changes as the result of taker's lead to the second trick. Since the taker did not show an emergency signal, he cannot have clubs (or hearts) blocked from the bottom. Since taker cannot have the $\clubsuit$2 it is safe for the giver to come down to her clubs, and she will make the correct play of pitching her hearts.