Good EGs of Bad Leads
This one comes from a Monday afternoon session, where the standard is not too different from Wednesdays. There are a lot of bad habits that have still to be ironed out by our newer and advancing players. This deal should help:
Board 6 Dealer E EW Vul
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9
T73
A7642
QJ98I am not going to talk about how, and why, EW should be able to bid to a slam in spades. It is the defence and declarer play that I want to address, because both, in a number of cases, were of a very poor quality.
Two Norths, against 4S, made the atrocious lead of the EIGHT of clubs, which as it happens was 'fourth highest'. But I have warned people of the dangers of leading low from such a good and semi solid suit; leading the eight simply asks for trouble, whereas leading the QUEEN is extremely unlikely to allow declarer to make a cheap trick with the ten. If only declarer had thought the said Norths might be inexperienced enough to make such an awful lead there would be nothing to lose by going up with the ten from dummy, and that was also the case when another North made an even worse lead of the NINE from the club suit. Every one of these declarers could have made SEVEN after the club lead, but apparently did not even try to do so. All that needed doing was to win the club ten and then draw two rounds of trumps to discard a HEART from dummy on the third club, then ruff the losing heart in dummy. One declarer did manage to do that.
Two declarers received another very bad lead of the ACE OF DIAMONDS, and I have spoken about such bad leads of unsupported aces many a time, but people still insist on leading off their aces. That, too, should have led to the three declarers making thirteen tricks, because the diamond king could take care of a heart loser after ruffing a club in dummy. But these declarers clearly did not bother to discard the heart on the king of diamonds.
I sometimes wonder why people go to the bridge club if it isn't to get GOOD results. Making as many tricks as they can should surely be part of the reason they go to the club, not to simply play the cards in a seemingly random way. And yes, TWO Norths did manage to do the right thing and lead the QUEEN of clubs. I hope you can now see why that is an excellent lead and why the nine or eight are such terribly poor leads.
