Lead from AKxx against notrumps

[MickyB]

If you are going to use one lead to ask for unblock/count, you will always have ambiguity with one of the other leads, the one you make when you hold your 'strong' card but can't afford to lead it. If the ace is your strong card, the king will be ambiguous.

The hand that started this thread is a typical example.

 

There are two reasons using the king as strong seems to me superior than the ace

 

There are holdings that need count or unblock from partner that don't include the ace - the default one is KQ109x

There are very few holdings that include the ace but not the king. In fact, I can't think of any that cannot survive by leading a lower honour, or leading the ace and getting attitude from partner.

 

If you lead K from KQT or AKxx, partner must discourage with the jack, this seems basically unplayable. Q from KQx or QJ9 is much less of an issue.

[Zelandakh]

There are holdings that need count or unblock from partner that don't include the ace - the default one is KQ109x

You can get around this one by having the queen ask for unblock of the jack. There is also the equivalent holding without a king (AQJTxxx or whatever). The bigger issue is the one that Micky brings up where you are unsure if holding the jack should encourage or discourage. The equivalent (but lesser problem is holding the queen after an ace lead, since you do not know if the king is also held by OLer).

 

Against this disadvantage you have more options for the J, T and 9 leads. It is a matter of weighing the pros and cons. For experts I am fairly sure the Rusinow-style method with a strong king is best because they will almost always do the right thing in those difficult cases. For intermediates I think a method like Journalist (strong ace, weak J, weak 9) is better because it makes the common difficult decisions easier.