Suppose you are East today, defending against four hearts on a trump lead.Declarer wins that in hand and wisely does not draw any more trumps, which would have let you signal effectively. Instead, he immediately leads a club, which your partner takes with the ace. If you follow routinely low, perhaps to show an odd number, partner’s life will become mighty difficult. After all, you can appreciate his problem. Dummy’s clubs may be poised to provide discards, in which case it is cash-out time, but how can partner know which pointed suit to play?Count in clubs is irrelevant, given dummy’s holding. Your card should instead indicate suit preference. Drop the club jack under partner’s ace to show strength in the higher-ranking side suit. Partner will then know to attack spades from his ace, and the defense will score two spades, a club and eventually a diamond.What actually happened was that East did follow low, and West had no clue what to do. A spade shift seemed dangerous, so he got out with a second trump. Declarer threw his spades on the club king and queen and ran the diamond nine, making an overtrick. The moral of the story? Give partner the information he wants to know. Specifically, do not bother giving count in what you believe to be a dead suit.To be fair, the line between when partner needs count or suit preference is often a fuzzy one. In general, if continuation makes no sense and it is known that the defense may have a choice of play, I lean toward suit preference.