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Deal of the Week
by Mitch Snyder
Is There A Right Lead?
This hand is from a robot game. It was played 11 times in 4 hearts. It went down 8 and made 3 times. One table was not in 4H.
Your Hand:---J43
J43
873
AT87
In fourth seat, white against red you see this auction:
W--------N--------E--------S
P---------P-------.1H------P
1S-----...P--------2H-----.P
3H-------P--------4H------P
P---------P
What do you lead?
There is nothing special about the auction and there’s no standout lead either. Leading dummy’s spade suit doesn’t appeal nor does leading a suit headed by a lone ace. A trump might be OK, but I’ve seen too many hands where partner has Qx opposite Jxx and it costs a trump trick. That leaves diamonds.
Which one? It is right to make a count lead in an unbid suit so lead the 3, or the 7 if you make MUD leads. (middle-up-down from 3 small). Those who adhere to BOSTON (bottom of something; top of nothing), which shouldn’t apply on the opening lead, led the 8.
I admit, I led the 8, something I would never do with a human partner but this was a robot game, so what the heck.
Click Here to see the whole hand.
At first glance this looks like an easy contract. There is a spade loser and 2 or 3 clubs but you can pitch a club on the diamond ace.
A spade lead defeats the contract off the top. (North wins the ace and switches to the club queen). Hats off to anyone who found that lead.
This contract can be made on any other lead.
A club lead… well, what can you say besides ‘thank you’.
While a heart lead doesn’t cost the defense a natural trump trick, it could cost a trump trick later on in a different way.
Every south led a diamond.
The key to making the hand is to not cash a high heart in hand after unblocking the diamonds. Enter dummy with the ace, pitch a club on the good diamond and reenter your hand in trump to pull the rest and eventually lose no more than 2 clubs and 1 spade.
On the lead of the 8, I can sympathize with the declarers who treated it as a doubleton and cashed a heart in hand to try and avoid a ruff before entering the dummy to pitch a club. But now declarer can’t get back to hand immediately and with careful play the defense can take 2 clubs, 1 spade and the jack of trump on a promotion.
If declarer exits with a spade north wins the ace and leads the club queen. If it holds, he switches to a diamond to promote south’s jack of trump. If declarer covers the queen, south wins and gets north back in with the jack to execute the promotion.
If declarer exits with a club, the defenders can cash both clubs and then north can gain the lead in spades to effect the promotion.
A heart opening lead fails because declarer can win the opening lead with the 10 and, still holding KQ, there is no promotion for the defense.
Funny thing, all three times 4H was made, it was because of a defensive error. Not a single robot found the winning line.
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