lead - least of evils?

[plaur]

[hv=s=sj962hkj83dtcat87]133|100|Scoring: MP

2NT - 3NT[/hv]

4th best agreed. Why do you lead what?

[han]

Because the other reasonable lead is almost as likely to give away tricks and this lead is more likely to set up tricks when partner has help in the suit.

[cherdano]

Because the other reasonable lead is almost as likely to give away tricks and this lead is more likely to set up tricks when partner has help in the suit.

Han is trying to say he leads a heart.

[jillybean]

3♥

[P_Marlowe]

Hearts.

 

If you have two reasonable 4 cards

suits to lead from, one headed by the Ace,

lead the other, this does not always work,

but is a reasonable rule to follow.

 

Playing MP you should go passive, but you have

no passive lead, this means, you can go for the

big pot.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[skjaeran]

Certainly not a minor suit. I can't help partner in ♦'s, and ♣ will often give away a trick. And I'll need ♣'s as an entry.

 

At IMPs I have an almost automatic ♥ lead - that's the best shot at setting the contract. At MP I'm more inclined to lead a low ♠. But it's close.

[mikeh]

Certainly not a minor suit. I can't help partner in ♦'s, and ♣ will often give away a trick. And I'll need ♣'s as an entry.

 

At IMPs I have an almost automatic ♥ lead - that's the best shot at setting the contract. At MP I'm more inclined to lead a low ♠. But it's close.

I usually find myself agreeing with Skaeran (I'd like to claim that he is usually agreeing with me B) ), but here, I'd never lead a ♠...I'd always lead a ♥, at all scoring.

 

My experience, and my reading (one article many years ago that has stuck with me), is that Jxxx is one of the absolute worst possible leads. That has always made sense to me. Of course, we may catch partner with the right cards, but far too often we either (on these strong auctions) lead through partner's xx into AK10x opposite Qxx or through partner's Hx.

 

As I see it, we have NO passive lead options, but I'd rather lead a ♣ than a ♠... and I detest the ♣ lead B)

 

I'd rank the leads as ♥100, ♣ 50, ♠ 20 and ♦ 10 (only because even this lead MIGHT work, especially at mps, altho I can just see myself trying to figure out my discards as declarer runs the suit I established by leading the 10 through KJ9xxx opposite Axx :ph34r: )

[jdonn]

I would lead a spade at all forms of scoring. A heart, to me, is just giving away a free trick most of the time, and even when it's right we may be able to switch later. The suits are breaking very badly for declarer here so I see no need at all to be aggressive, I think this may well be down if we don't blow tricks. I really don't think a spade with J9xx is that risky. I hear people say all the time how they hate leading from Jxxx, but I guess I just haven't had the bad experiences they have had.

[Apollo81]

I would lead a spade at all forms of scoring. A heart, to me, is just giving away a free trick most of the time, and even when it's right we may be able to switch later. The suits are breaking very badly for declarer here so I see no need at all to be aggressive, I think this may well be down if we don't blow tricks. I really don't think a spade with J9xx is that risky. I hear people say all the time how they hate leading from Jxxx, but I guess I just haven't had the bad experiences they have had.

In my experience there is a huge difference between leading from Jxxx (which is one of my least favorite leads) and leading from J9xx.

 

I'd also lead a spade.

[sceptic]

this is why I like the forums and bridge so much, there is always a definative answer :P

[Fluffy]

Certainly not a minor suit. I can't help partner in ♦'s, and ♣ will often give away a trick. And I'll need ♣'s as an entry.

 

At IMPs I have an almost automatic ♥ lead - that's the best shot at setting the contract. At MP I'm more inclined to lead a low ♠. But it's close.

I think exactly this.

[gwnn]

I'd surely lead ♠'s at the table cause I'm really not sure we're beating this... And maybe, just maybe, this is the least dangerous of leads.

[mikeh]

I ran a simulation of a little under 100 deals (I threw a few away because I thought most responders would have bid differently). I had declarer with 20-21 hcp, no 6 card suit, and not 5422, and balanced. I had responder no 4 card major and no 7 card suit and 4-10 hcp.

 

I think this is a little unrealistic, in that personally I will often bid 3N with a 4=3=3=3 or 3=4=3=3 with 7+ hcp, and adding the possibility that dummy holds 4 of a major will influence the outcome to a modest degree.. my expectation is that it will hurt the ♠ lead a little more than the ♥ lead, since when dummy holds 4♥s, we will often score our King eventually, but we may lose our ♠ trick if we lead that suit.

 

Anyway, the results are a little sloppy.

 

There were a large number of 'doesn't matter' hands, or hands on which declarer probably makes the same number of tricks on what seems like normal play... I wasn't spending a lot of time analyzing the play options. So on 31 hands, one could make any lead and it probably didn't matter.

 

The most effective lead was, actually, a ♠! It worked best 26 times. A ♥ was best 20 times and a club 13 times.

 

However, when one lead was especially wrong, that lead rated to be a ♠. There were 16 hands on which a spade was especially horrible, while the numbers for ♣s and ♥s were distinctly lower.

 

90 hands, especially with the constraints in use, is not a huge sample, but I was surprised to see that the ♠ lead was so effective...altho it's downside, at mps, was very bad. It was worse than the ♥ lead because, especially when the ♥Q was in dummy, we usually rated to score the ♥K later anyway... or declarer had so many winners that it was irrelevant. The spade lead lost for the expected reasons: finding the suit as Kx in dummy and AQ10x in declarer was one example.

 

There were 10x or 10xx holdings with declarer having AKQx as well.

 

I did the analysis at mps, so the overtricks were important. I didn't make specific note of the occasions when we could actually beat game, but my sense was that the club lead was the most effective if we wanted a set, while either major was better than the club lead, generally, in terms of holding the overtrick.

[skjaeran]

I usually find myself agreeing with Skaeran (I'd like to claim that he is usually agreeing with me :) ), but here, I'd never lead a ♠...I'd always lead a ♥, at all scoring.

If you claim that I am more often agreeing with you than the other way around, you're probably right. You often get to post before me in threads.

[Guest Jlall]

Heart even after the simulation.

 

1) The defense will often be difficult for partner to figure out after a spade lead. I doubt the simulation took this into account.

 

2) I always hate when people talk about the mysterious "field" however I think this is a good time for it. If you view the leads as close I think most will be leading a heart and I would like to stay in the game with them. A spade lead has a very high variance and doesn't use my natural skill advantage as well as it can. Even with the simulation its not conclusive since the sample is small and the difference is small, all we know is that the leads are close.

[Quantumcat]

My grandmother told me that if you have the choice of a major or minor in an auction like that, choose a major because neither has length there and it is more likely to be the right suit. (so I pick ♥)