Vil Gravis's blog

Opening Leads Chapter 10: Thinking and Communicating

I would now like to revisit Chapter 9 and take another look at problem b) because another look will open our eyes to the need to THINK as well as not jump to conclusions, and that goes both for the defenders and declarer.

b) Dealer East, All Vul
The bidding has been:

SouthWestNorthEast
---1NT
X2XPass
3NTPassPassPass

Your hand:
J92
T7632
4
J543

Your lead?

Opening Leads Chapter 9

Here is my take on the opening lead problems from Chapter 8, supported by a number of answers from a group of improvers as well as some views from the more experienced. I stress that there is never a perfect opening lead, but some have a better chance of success, and it is these that, if you can arrive at them with some good and logical thinking, will get you the better outcomes. All the opening lead problems come from actual play. In all cases, there is an opening lead that a) would have obtained the best result and b) could have been arrived at through a process of logical thinking and attention to the bidding. That is what we should all be trying to cultivate and which is the purpose of this exercise.

a) Dealer South, EW Vul
The bidding has been:

SouthWestNorthEast
PassPass1Pass
1Pass2Pass
PassPass

Your hand:
32
QJ3
AK8
97643

Opening Leads Chapter 8

Not every situation presents an ‘obvious’ opening lead. You may recall the saying that “God didn’t give you AK in the same suit for you to lead any other suit”, as well as the well known rule that you don’t lead an unsupported ace, especially when you hold AQ. There are, however, times when if you think things through, you can come up with what is so unorthodox that it makes so little sense to declarer that it can bring about a quite unexpected result. In the previous chapter we had to come up with an opening lead against 6S. We held AQx of spades. The lead from left field that I suggested was the ace of trumps.

Now for some more opening lead problems

a) Dealer South, EW Vul
The bidding has been:

SouthWestNorthEast
PassPass1Pass
1Pass2Pass
PassPass

Your hand:
32
QJ3
AK8
97643

Your lead?

Opening Leads Chapter 7

There are two very important things you need to consider when you are making your opening lead. First, you must take note of the bidding and try and work out from that just who might have what; second, you should try and work out how declarer is going to play the hand. Not all bidding by opponents is going to be accurate, in fact it will probably be anything but, but you have to believe as much as you need to. As for how declarer will play the contract, we all know how inept most declarers are, but if you can work out how declarer should play the contract, and then, if declarer might succeed by a likely line of play, you can try and do your best to persuade declarer to go wrong. Those are the two themes I want to examine in this chapter.

Opening Leads Chapter 6

Two more opening leads to look at. These should be easy enough because you don’t need more than two tricks to defeat small slams. But you still need to give the opening leads a lot of thought. Handing declarer a slam on a platter can be somewhat of a bummer, don’t you agree? So give these some thought before we go to Chapter 7.

e) The bidding has been:
Dealer South, Nil Vul

SouthWestNorthEast
1NTPass4Pass
4Pass5Pass
5NTPass6NTPass
PassPass

North’s 4C and 5C are ace and king asks, and South has shown one ace and three kings
Your hand:

AQ2
J973
JT8
743

Your lead?

Opening leads Chapter 5

Two more opening lead questions, which should be easy because both are against slams

e) The bidding has been:
Dealer South, Nil Vul

SouthWestNorthEast
1NTPass4Pass
4Pass5Pass
5NTPass6NTPass
PassPass

North’s 4C and 5C are ace and king asks, and South has shown one ace and three kings
Your hand:

AQ2
J973
JT8
743

Your lead?

Double Dummy 21

This is not a double dummy play problem but more about bidding, featuring yet again what seems to be the constant shunning of the minor suit slam. It is true that in this deal, 3NT played by North and making overtricks would have scored over 80% so you might say, why worry about bidding any slams. At match points it is no big deal, but at teams, bidding the good slams can make a huge difference. But let’s see why a very good small slam (which makes an overtrick played double dummmy) was either too difficult to bid, or simply eschewed in favour of the easily bid 3NT.

Board 7 from Thursday 23/05/24
Dealer S All Vul

QT76
32
AJ2
AT54
J42
T7
QT86543
2
953
QJ985
K7
Q86
AK8
AK64
9
KJ973

OPENING LEADS - Chapter 4

Now let me give you some more opening lead problems. This exercise will be done in four parts, two opening lead problems each time.
You are once more WEST

a) Dealer South, EW VUL

SouthWestNorthEast
1NTPass2Pass
2Pass2NTPass
3NTPassPassPass

(1NT is 12-14)

Your hand:

AQ2
J973
JT
743

What would you lead?

OPENING LEADS - Which Suit, Which card?

Chapter 2: Which Suit, Which card?
The problems we saw earlier were not that difficult when you thought about them, were they? You had a clear indication of which suit to lead, and, hopefully the logical rules of ‘fourth highest’ or ‘ace when you have AK in your suit’ were good enough to get you off to the best start. There is a good reason why it is important to have a specific system and understanding of what each card led on the opening lead is trying to say, because partner needs to know that. So, let’s now take a look at what all the cards, from the ace down to the humble deuce, should generally mean to any partnership. Then, when the basic understandings are there, we can look at even more sophisticated ways we can use all of the thirteen cards we are dealt, be they aces and kings or little pip cards.

OPENING LEADS - Trumps, or No Trumps?

Chapter 1: Trumps, or No Trumps?
The first thing we must learn is that the opening lead against a NO TRUMP contract needs to be different from the opening lead against a TRUMP contract, for good reasons: If your opponents have chosen a suit as trumps, they have done so because they believe that they will have the advantage that whatever suit the defenders have strength and/or length in can not do any damage as long as the declaring side have trumps when they have no cards in the defenders’ suit or suits, in either dummy or declarer’s hand. That is what is known as ‘trump control’.

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