What to Lead?

[Myrmidon73]

I was playing in a Wednesday night beginner's game, and I had to lead on teh following auction. What should I have lead, sitting north?

 

W N E S

1D p 2C p

2D p 2N p

3D all pass

 

 

S: K 9 8 7 5

H: A 8 6 4

D: J 5

C: 9 4

 

Thanks for your help

[Codo]

1. ask your pd to lead

 

2. shuffle all 13 and take one

 

3. Every suit is bad but I prefer a club, this may well blow a tempo but at least normally no trick. The tempo could be of more value then the trick anyway, but I hope the best.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

 

spades.

 

Simply eliminate the "do not touch" suits

and see what is left.

 

#clubs is their suit

#hearts, it seldom pays to lead from

a suit headed by the Ace

 

It is a question bewteen spades and trumps,

spade is agressive, trump passive, if you want

to beat the contract attack spades, if you

want to avoid overtricks (MP), diamonds is an

option, but you will face the risk that your tricks

disappear on dummies clubs.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[Free]

I think a small ♥ will work best here. Yes, it's underleading an Ace, but LHO will probably have the K...

[SoTired]

This is one of those obvious lead hands - a lesson for beginners.

 

One of the comments I tell my partners, "Why can't you lead one of our suits once in a while. Why do you always want to lead their suits."

 

Not a club. That is a loser lead. Whatever major tricks we have are going on the club suit. Why help declarer set up dummy's clubs?

 

Not a trump. With ♦Jx, we could give away our trump trick if partner holds a honor.

 

Since beginners should be taught to never lead away from an ace or lead an unsupported, unbid suit ace against a suit contract, a heart lead is out.

 

That leaves a spade. The spade suit is also the most likely suit to develop our tricks in and least likely to give away a trick by leading.

 

Next question: Does the 987 of K987 count as "interior sequence"? No! 987 does not count as a sequence. For leading purposes, 987 are just 3 spot cards. 1098 is a sequence, 987 is not.

 

So we are leading either 4th best (♠7) or 5th best (♠5) depending on our suit lead agreement.

[bhall]

The best advice I can give you is to construct a model for the hidden hands, based on the auction, and select a lead that has a chance of building tricks for your side. Here, declarer has described a long diamond suit that probably won't run in notrump (he didn't pass 2N or raise to 3N), and responder has suggested that he holds invitational values with high cards in both majors.

 

If those are true pictures, then your partner rates to hold about 9 high-card points including a high diamond. A secondary high card in one of the majors and one in clubs seems likely. If his major high card is the ♠Q, you can set up a trick in that suit by leading spades before declarer can set up clubs or hearts for a spade discard, or you can knock out dummy's ♠A entry when declarer holds a spade singleton. If partner holds the ♠A instead, you have transferred the lead problem to partner, who at least can see the dummy before choosing.

 

It is unlikely that you are leading into declarer's ♠AQ because of the 2N bid, so your lead will only lose a trick when the A and Q are split between the two hands. The other leads that have been suggested would lose more often, in my opinion.

[cherdano]

Low systemic spade, unanimously.