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When your opposition get into an aggressive but making contract, a defender has to do something pretty drastic to save the day for their team. That was certainly the case when Franklin Club player, Christine Egelmeer, found herself on lead to 7ª in the Teams event in the recent Taranaki Congress. She held ♠ 642 ♥ K109 ♦ Q62 ♣J1053 and listened to an artificial bidding sequence where dummy described their hand as being five spades, six hearts, no diamonds and two clubs. Dummy had either three aces and no kings or two aces and two kings. Declarer’s hand was completely unknown. What would your choice of lead be?

There is a good case for a standard trump lead or maybe even a top club…both very reasonable and safe but this time would result in -2210 being the result. Christine was more aggressive and led the ©10. Let’s see all four hands:

	North
Dealer North	♠ AQJ73
Vul. All	♥ AJ7543
	♦ -
West	♣ A8	East
♠ 642		♠ 8
♥ K109		♥ 62
¨♦Q62		♦ J108543
♣ J1053	South	♣ 9742
	♠ K1095
	♥ Q8
	♦ AK97
	♣ KQ6

 

On any other lead, South would win, draw trumps and take the heart finesse and uncross their fingers when it worked. Yet, the ♥10 lead sowed some doubt in declarer’s mind. Would Christine have really led away from the king or was the finesse about to fail? Could West have four hearts headed by the 109 leaving the king singleton in East’s hand? South decided that that was the more likely situation and thus played the ace at trick one…and was one down. That was 17 imps in rather than 13 imps out when Christine’s teammates played in

the safety of 6♠.

 

.

 Christine's great lead saved her team, including husband

 and partner, Henk.

Why was it “safe” to lead the heart? It sounded like the ♥A was in dummy and that declarer might need to find the king eventually. Make declarer decide at trick one. No-one likes to take finesse at trick one in a grand slam. Great lead, Christine. You saved your team.

 

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