Merry Xmas X-Clubs
I have come to the conclusion that I must give up some of my crazy ideas about defence. I should give up on thinking that defence is about anything more than leading partner’s suit, because of my terrible blunder when I was South in this X-Clubs deal, from 28/11/25
Board 20 . Dealer W All Vul
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9
A74
7542
AKT74The bidding was just as you might expect. West opened 1H, North overcalled 2C, East bid 2S and West 4S. I had to make the opening lead. Seems easy enough, lead partner’s suit. But which CARD? That is the problem, partner would surely read the nine or eight as a doubleton, the 6 as either a singleton or third from an honour. I have always hated making an opening lead from ‘three small’ and always thought ‘top of nothing’ or ‘MUD’ was a cop out and there had to be something better. But when partner has overcalled the suit at the two level, surely I must lead the suit, it is a must! I thought further, about the possible distribution and what might happen if indeed partner had AKxxx of clubs. What would happen is that partner would cash both clubs and thus give declarer a discard from dummy on the third round. Apart from clubs, what might North hold? Diamonds most likely and if it was the king and dummy came down with Ax? A club lead would see partner win the king and be endplayed and the low diamond would indeed go away on declarer’s third club. If I led a diamond and partner had nothing there, was there any chance that any of clubs would run away, since I had hearts held, and also the trump suit was under control, and I should be able to switch to a club later. What could go wrong? That is when 50 years of playing bridge told me to lead the nine of diamonds. When declarer called for the ace in dummy, I thought I’d struck gold but when declarer turned out to have a secondary diamond suit headed by the KQ and wrapped up ELEVEN tricks, it was custard not gold and I need not repeat what North had to say about not leading his suit. It should have been obvious. It is now also obvious to me that I don’t know even the basics about defence, which is why I say to all my readers:
Sorry, but no more left field articles next year. Nevertheless ...
Merry Xmas and all the best for next year
Vil
