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 Opening Lead for Intermediates 16 by Andy Hung

Opening Leads. They're the card that sets the tempo of all bridge hands, and it is the first strike that the defense gets. Sometimes declarer's contract is rock solid and the lead doesn't matter, or sometimes the contract is too high and declarer is destined to fail.

What is important is that we must make every effort to choose the best opening lead that will give us the best chance to defeat the contract. Are you ready?

Question 1

  Your Hand
 6 5 4 3
 A Q 10 7 5
 A J 3
 5
 
Q: 1 - You are South.

SouthWestNorthEast
---1
1Pass23
Pass3Pass3NT
PassPassPass

You are on lead against 3NT where East has shown a good hand with long Diamonds and West has asked East for a Heart stopper with the 3 bid. What do you lead?

 Your choice:
A: A.

As our partner supported our Hearts, it would seem silly not to lead a Heart. Furthermore, we have control in East's Diamond suit with our AJ3, so we have the time (tempo) to get our Hearts going.

The question is, which Heart should we lead?

The Ace of Hearts will do better on average although the Queen is probably OK too. The danger about leading a small Heart is that dummy might have J x with declarer holding K x x. In that case, declarer will rise with the J (winning) and now when we get in with the A, we can't touch the Hearts without giving declarer another Heart trick.

The Ace of Hearts covers all grounds. If dummy has J x, we will continue with the Q at trick 2 to squash it. If declarer has K J x, partner will give us a discouraging signal in which case we will need to find a switch to get partner in to return a Heart for us.

Your result so far:
Open Question

Question 2

  Your Hand
 K 8 7 5 4
 Q J 6
 5 4
 6 5 4
 
Q: 2 - You are South.

SouthWestNorthEast
---1
Pass1Pass1
Pass2PassPass
Pass

A nice and quiet partscore here. What will you lead against East's 2?

 Your choice:
A: 5.

Responder has preferred opener's first suit, thus marking him with shortness in the Spade suit. The opponents have also stopped in a partscore too, so this usually tells us that we should lead a trump to cut down the ruffs from dummy.

However, we can make a more informed decision based on our hand. We hold length in Spades, so inferentially, partner is ALSO short in Spades! Therefore, we don't need to lead a trump to cut down the ruffs in dummy as our partner will be in a position to overruff dummy!

In that case, we might as well lead the fourth suit, Clubs, to take and establish whatever tricks we have there!

Your result so far:
Open Question

Question 3

  Your Hand
 8
 9 6 3 2
 Q 10 9 2
 A Q 10 4
 
Q: 3 - You are South.

SouthWestNorthEast
---1NT
Pass3Double3NT
PassPassPass

East opens a strong 1NT and West jumps to 3, in which this particular E/W were playing that as an artificial bid, showing a game-going hand with four Hearts. Beats me why they are playing that gadget instead of going via Stayman, but that's not what concerns us. We have the information, so let's use it to decide on an opening lead.

 Your choice:
A: 8.

Did you forget about partner's Double of 3? Well he did, so he has made our life much easier! His double of the artificial 3 bid is lead directing, telling us that he has a decent Spade suit that he would like us to lead unless we think we have a much better option available. Here, we don't, so let's cooperate with our partner and lead a Spade.

Your result so far:
Open Question

Question 4

  Your Hand
 Q 10
 J 9 7 5 4
 K 9 8 7
 A K
 
Q: 4 - You are South.

SouthWestNorthEast
1Pass22
PassPassPass

East's 2 overcall bought the contract. What do you lead?

 Your choice:
A: K.

We are definitely leading a Club as it is the most productive lead. We have two winners there, and a possibility of a ruff to follow in Clubs, so it can't be wrong to lead a Club!

But - which Club should we lead? Does it matter?

You bet it does. If you lead the Ace followed by the King, that would be the normal sequential lead with no meaning implied to it. However, if you lead in the abnormal order of the KING followed by the ACE, this is now a "wake up" signal - telling partner that our unusual order of play indicates that we have AK doubleton.

If partner reads this correctly, we may be able to get over to her hand and give us a Club ruff.

Remember, Bridge is a partnership game. It may not seem like it makes an ounce of difference whether we play Ace-King or King-Ace, but from PARTNER'S point of view, she may never know whether we have a doubleton or not unless we tell her from the order of our play.

Your result so far:
Open Question

Question 5

  Your Hand
 A 9 8
 K J 9 8 7 4 2
 9
 J 3
 
Q: 5 - You are South.

SouthWestNorthEast
---1
12Pass2
Pass3Pass3NT
PassPassPass

You are on lead against 3NT after a very informative auction. What will you choose?

 Your choice:
A: 8.

East may have a Heart stopper from the 3NT rebid, but what other hopes do we have of beating the contract in a non-Heart suit? That's right, the other three suits seems helpless.

Therefore, we should stick with the fourth best from our longest and strongest suit, and that is the 8.

This deal was from the recent 2015 NEC Cup held in Japan in the Open Teams Final, and the player holding this hand on this given auction did lead a Heart - and was swiftly rewarded when partner showed up with Q3!

Your result so far:
Open Question

Overall Results

Your results:   out of    Average: 

What next? You may enjoy playing our prepared hands series.
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