Opening Lead for Intermediates 19 by Andy Hung

A: ♣A.

There's no reason to lead a Heart here when we have the top two Clubs. Even if a Heart lead is right, we can still switch to a Heart at trick two. Leading a top Club allows us to grab a trick first and have a look at dummy before deciding what to do next. An Ace lead here would promise the King, so partner will encourage if he has either the ♣Q or a doubleton Club (wanting a ruff). It's hard to fault an AK lead!

Your result so far:

A: ♠A.

Technically with ♠AKQ, you can lead any Spade honor since it won't make a difference. However, it MAY make a difference to partner. If you lead the ♠K or ♠Q, partner may have a void and won't know where the Ace is, and he may ruff the trick. In that case, it's best just to lead the ♠A.

Your result so far:

A: ♠K.

Here is an exception to the "Overlead" rule. At the 5-level or higher, a good tip here is to play a leading convention where Ace leads asks for attitude, and King leads asks for count.

The reason for this is because when you are defending against such a high level contract, it now starts to become OK to lead unsupported Aces because you [the defense] may need to cash out their tricks as quick as possible.

Here, we should lead the ♠K to ask for a count signal from partner - that way, we know how many Spades we can cash before we need to switch to another suit.

Your result so far:

A: ♠A.

Listen to the auction. The opponents are playing Clubs, and on the way to 5♣, West announced a strong Heart suit. This calls out for an aggressive defense (take/establish your tricks as soon as possible!) because we can envision declarer's plan: draw trumps and set up the Hearts!

Thus, we should lead either a Spade or a Diamond. If our Diamonds were ♦K9742, it would be a bit tougher to decide, but here, our Diamonds are only headed by the Queen. As a result, we should lead the ♠A. At the 5-level (or higher), we can start to lead unsupported Aces, and here, our ♠A lead would in fact ask for attitude (partner will encourage with the King).

Your result so far:

A: ♥K.

Defending a 5-level contract, you must be careful because if the contract is beatable, quite often you will need to know how many tricks you can cash out in a suit.

Here, we have an obvious Heart lead but we should lead the ♥K. It is good to have the agreement where Ace leads asks for attitude and King leads asks for Count when defending against a 5-level contract or higher.

Leading the ♥K here will ask partner for a count signal, and using that information, we will know whether our ♥A will stand up - if not, then we'll know to find a switch.

Your result so far: