Give me a lead here ...
From 20/2/19. Continuing on from last time, let’s take another look at the deal in question and see why good defence is so important.
Board 3 from 20/02/2019
Dealer S EW Vul
| ||||||||||
|
| |||||||||
|
QJ642
7542
93
A4South was invariably declarer in a heart contract. A count of results of the 90 tables that played this board at X-Clubs shows the following:
- 39 Souths were in 2H. 12 made 4, 25 made 3, and two made 2
- 31 were in 3H. 8 made 4, 13 made 3, 8 made 2, and 2 were down one
- 20 were in 4H. 14 made 4, 5 were down 1, and 1 was down 2
Proper defence should result in declarer in any heart contract making ONLY eight tricks. That means, that even allowing for possibly very poor declarer play, only five out of 90 pairs of defenders found the best defence. Is the best defence that difficult to find? I suggest not, if you follow the basic principles of defence. I intend to work through this particular deal in quite some detail. If you can bear with me, you will learn a lot about defence just from this one deal.
Firstly, the opening lead. This is quite a unique deal, because the opening lead should be the same whether it is against 2H, 3H, or 4H. Let’s look at the rationale.
A trump lead is out of the question, because West can hope to make one trump trick if he sits back and waits. The ace of spades? When you lead an ace holding a doubleton, you are hoping for a third round ruff. Why do that when you have a near certain trump trick anyway, and when the bidding tells you that partner is unlikely to hold the king anyway. What about a diamond? You should by now know that you should not be leading the ace from such a suit. Nor should you be leading a low one, that will be likely to give the very first trick away to the king, whoever has it and the odds are huge that it is with dummy or declarer. So, you should not be leading a spade, a heart, or a diamond! Check out BSOL by clicking here
Now, before our next issue, have a think about what I will be saying next.
