Rules. What rules? This deal comes from play at X-Clubs on Tuesday 1/7/25
Board 2. Dealer E NS Vul
The bidding may be different elsewhere, but let’s say East opens 1C and South overcalls 1S, or makes an ‘intermediate’ jump overcall of 2S. West will, in any experienced partnership, double, and whether North bids 3D or not, East will bid 3H and end up in 4H. All very normal and reasonable bidding, and South is on lead. Guidelines for opening leads? Using my guidelines, South can not lead anything! But as it happens, South really can’t go wrong as long as the obvious NO-NO lead of a trump is avoided and neither of the black aces is underled. Whichever ace South chooses (I would lead the ace of spades since there may be an outside chance of North having a singleton, whereas the ace of clubs is much better kept sitting over anything declarer has in clubs. But the moment the spade ace is led, all is revealed. Given East’s 1C opening bid, it should be easy for South to see what will happen next, and poor declarer will suffer badly. Ace of clubs is followed by a club ruff, and whether NS play SUIT PREFERENCE** signals or not, North will return a diamond. Imagine declarer’s face when his singleton ace of diamonds is ruffed! Then follows another club ruff and yet another diamond ruff completes the fun for the defence. Sometimes you just can’t go wrong.
** Suit Preference signals: When you know that partner will ruff, it may be important to SIGNAL to partner which suit to lead back to give you an entry for a second ruff. A HIGH card (the NINE in this case) would ask for the HIGHER of the other suits, and a LOW one asks for the LOWER. Hence the SEVEN asking for a diamond which, seeing dummy, is a no-brainer.
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KT987532
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