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Keeping Options Open.

Whether or not you can use the “undo” button when playing bridge on-line, you get no second chance to withdraw your lead in real life. There is certainly no second chance when you see immediately that you regret the tabled card.

There is, on some deals, a chance to do something about your opening lead, on the sight of dummy, if you retain the lead after trick 1.

 

Your rather good Weak Jump Overcall did not seem to have affected your opponents much. So, it’s time to find the killing lead. Can you? Is there one?

You are playing Pairs.

You have seen it said many times before: “any lead could be right…or wrong”! There’s lots of other helpful advice around opening leads, like not under-leading aces, like not leading unsupported aces (that is, an ace where you do not hold the king of a suit), that leading a singleton, while it can be dangerous, is a good idea in a suit contract. There is the proviso there that you have a trump or two!

Maybe, some of that helpful advice convinced nearly every West player who held the above hand to try their singleton spade as the opening lead. Remembering that they were playing Pairs, they were all to record very soon an average minus score when they could have recorded a near top!

It was not impossible that East could hold the A as either North or South could have been a little weaker. Yet, the chances of the singleton lead being the right lead are vastly reduced when you only have a singleton trump as you cannot benefit from your partner having the trump ace, maybe even trump king, where they win the lead in trumps and then give you a ruff. Your trump would be long gone!

Also, even if East had held K, the chance of declarer ducking the opening lead to their queen on the basis you have led away from the king is or should not be great as your Weak Jump Overcall means you are much more likely to have led a shortage than away from an honour.

So, leading an ace seems more sensible. You can always switch to the singleton spade at trick 2 if as is likely, you retain the lead. However, when you see the A in dummy, you might decide on a different approach, which you could not do had you started with your spade.

Which ace?

When you hold a seven-card suit, there is a reasonable chance that you can give your partner a ruff. If not, you could always start with A and go from there. On the A lead, with such a threatening suit in dummy, your partner should be able to guide you with a suit-preference signal, a low club asking for the lower of the other two suits. Two more tricks for the defence should follow very quickly (A and a ruff).

Had you started with A, you have a difficult choice. If you can give partner a ruff, then it may be best to continue with your lowest diamond asking for a club return and maybe then a second ruff. However, if no diamond ruff is possible, then you might have lost your club trick (give East one more diamond and one less trump).

With the actual dummy looking quite strong in high cards, you might decide to cash both aces before trying a low diamond. As you can see, three tricks are all the defence can take but -420 would have been a mighty good Pairs score for the defence.

A False Card?

South may fear what is coming on the A lead. To try to prevent the impending ruff, they could throw K under the ace. While South might have K doubleton, for those playing reverse count, the 3 would be a strange card for East to play if South held a true singleton king. Holding J73, the 3 would neither be a true (reverse) count card and East would hardly encourage from that holding. The ruse should not work.

Also, if East-West were playing natural signals, the 3 could not be from a doubleton though then it could be from J73.

Reality

Please!

After the spade lead, trumps were drawn and the second spade honour was played from the South hand (not before trumps were drawn!). Then, heart to dummy and A discarding South’s club and the declarer's only losing trick was A..+480.

One West player did get the lead right…an ace. Yet, they were defending 6! I doubt any player would recommend the singleton spade lead against that contract!

How Low, Joe?

 

Sometimes you wish you had first shot at the bidding but have to wait for one, two, even three players to make a bid before you can. Not so, here. It is you, first to speak. Would you? If so what?

The game is Teams and the Panel have all week-end to decide!

Richard Solomon

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