Leading
fourth best from your longest and strongest suit is a preferred standard
opening lead in defending against a no trump contract. But how do you determine
what your “longest and strongest” suit is? Look at the following hand, sitting
south:
♠ AQ97
♥ T6432
♦ T6
♣ T2
Here’s
the auction:
West
|
North
|
East
|
South
|
P
|
|||
P
|
P
|
1N
|
P
|
2N
|
P
|
3N
|
All
Pass
|
So
what is your longest and strongest suit? Your longest is hearts, but it is
woefully weak. Your strongest in terms of points is spades, but it is shorter
than your heart suit. Which should you lead?
The
answer is that you should the heart three. Why? Because if hearts split 3-3-2
and your partner has an honor or two you have the possibility of taking three
heart tricks. Here is the four hand layout in this hand that was played in a
team game.
North
♠ 532
♥ QJ5
♦ K542
♣ Q95
West East
♠ KJ8 ♠ T64
♥ 98 ♥ AK7
♦ J873 ♦ AQ9
♣ KJ63 ♣ A874
South
♠ AQ97
♥ T6432
♦ T6
♣ T2
Bidding: As standard as
standard can be. East opens 1N with 17 HCP and 4-3-3-3 distribution. West
invites with 9 HCP. East at the top of his bid, accepts the invitation and bids
3N, which makes if South leads the spade 7, which is what happened at the other
table, because a spade lead gives declarer two spade tricks.
Play: The best chance
to beat the contract is to lead the heart 3, and hope that the four higher
honors get played in the first two leads of hearts, giving you the ten to pull
the last heart. In your favor, dummy did not bid Stayman, so you know she has
less than four hearts, so the chances of the positive split for which you are
searching are enhanced. In response to your opening lead, partner played the
heart jack, taken by declarer’s king. She leads the Club ace and then takes the
finesse. Partner wins the club queen and properly returns the heart queen (when
returning partner’s opening lead when you started with three cards in the suit,
you lead back your higher card remaining, not your lower card; that tells your
partner that you only had three to start with and in this case it also unblocks
the suit; if you led the low heart, when partner got in you would be forced to
overtake his lead of the ten with your queen and his remaining two good hearts
would go wasted), which declarer takes with the ace. She takes two clubs and leads
the diamond jack, which partner covers with his king, declarer winning the ace
in her hand. She takes the two remaining diamonds in her hand (when south’s ten
falls, her 9 is the high diamond out) but now needs to get to the board for her
ninth trick to make the contract. Here’s
the situation at this point:
North
♠ 53
♥ 5
♦ 5
♣
West East
♠ KJ8 ♠ T64
♥ ♥ 7
♦ 8 ♦
♣ ♣
South
♠ A
♥ T64
♦
♣
The
only way to the board is spades and when she leads the ten south takes his ace,
leads the ten of hearts, pulling the last two hearts making the last two hearts
in his hand good for down one.
If
your opening lead is a spade, you will never be able to set up your hearts. You
must start with your first lead or you can forget about hearts.
So
the moral here is that when determining your “longest and strongest” suit in
defending no trump, 95% of the time your longest suit is your strongest suit
regardless of the high cards you might or might not hold in the suit. But in
making this determination, you must hold cards in your hand to get the lead to
make your small cards in your long suit good. This means you must be able to
take at least one trick with a card in another suit. In this hand, it was the
ace of spades (and maybe the queen, depending on the location of the king),
which you must preserve until after you’ve set up the long suit.
No comments:
Post a Comment