X-Clubs 51

What is one of the first things your bridge teacher taught you about opening leads?

I would venture a guess and suggest that it is “lead your fourth highest of your longest and strongest”. That is just a simplification, and not always the best answer to an opening lead problem, as we will see later in this discussion. Nevertheless it is a very good suggestion, especially against a No Trump contract. A good idea, but you should know WHY, and WHEN ‘fourth highest’ is a good idea. To help you understand that, in X-Clubs 50 I set you some problems of which card to play when you are the partner of the opening leader. I did not give you the bidding, which is of course important, nor do I show you the other suits in dummy. That was intentional.

Generally, when you lead your ‘fourth highest’, you are hoping that partner will have at least one high card which will complement your own high cards and that this will create tricks for your side when declarer’s high cards are removed. But you wouldn’t always lead your fourth highest when you have most of the high cards yourself, because expecting partner to have the one missing card is too much to
ask. You would certainly not lead your ‘fourth highest’ if you held AKQ10. Nor would you lead the nine if you held KQJ9, giving a cheap trick to declarer is never a good idea. So, a general rule might be that you lead a low card when you have gaps to fill at the top and hope that partner can fill one or two of them and thus establish tricks for the defence.

Why ‘fourth highest’? Two reasons: Generally, if you are hoping to establish tricks in your suit, that will be your longest and strongest suit and you will have at least four cards in it. Second reason: You want to tell partner what you hold in that suit, don’t you? If you just lead your lowest card, partner will not know how many cards you have in it, nor anything about your specific cards in the suit, other that not having a good sequence at the top.

You might now ask: how does leading your fourth highest tell partner what you want to tell them, or what they might want to know? That is where the “Rule of 11” comes in. Many players know that rule but are either too lazy to use it or can’t quite understand it, or how to make use of it. Fortunately, many declarers don’t make use of that knowledge either, as you may see in the coming articles. Let me try and explain the rule of 11 as best I can, and as briefly as possible: There are thirteen cards in each suit, but the lowest card is the TWO, therefore the highest card, the ace, is effectively the FOURTEEN. Fourth highest means there are THREE higher cards in that hand, and 14-3=11. Hence the rule of 11. So, when your partner leads any card that you think, or know, is their fourth highest, subtract the face value of that card from 11 and that will tell you how many HIGHER cards there are in the other suits.

A simple example: partner leads the SIX: dummy has two higher cards, and you have one. 11-6=5 therefore declarer has TWO cards higher than the six that partner has led. You don’t know just which these two cards are but when you see the actual cards in dummy, you should be able to make the best decision on which card you should play when declarer calls for a card from dummy. Now that you know the “Rule of 11”, let’s look at the problems posed in No.50. If I tell you that in each case partner has led their ‘fourth highest’, decide what your answers will be now. Will you still play the same card as when you read the previous article, or would your play be different?

Here are the problems from X-Clubs 50.
1.The contract is 1NT after South has opened 1NT. Your partner (West) leads the seven of spades, and dummy’s spades are K62 and your (East) holding is AJ93. When declarer calls for the two from dummy, which card you you play?

2. Same again, 1NT by South. Partner leads the spade seven and dummy faces with J83. Your spades are Q64. Declarer plays the three from dummy. Which card do you play?

3. This time, South has opened 1NT and North raised to 3NT. Partner leads the four of spades and dummy’s spades are J8. Your spades are Q93. When declarer plays the spade eight from dummy, which card do you play?

4. This time South is in 4 Spades . South has opened the bidding with 1S and rebid spades, that is really all we need to know. Partner leads the six of diamonds. Here is what you, as East, see in dummy:

Q7

AK86

QT3

KT75

32

T932

K842

943

Declarer calls for the diamond ten from dummy. Which card do you play? I'd appreciate the feedback if you send answers to me (Vil) at villyn@xtra.co.nz