[pclayton]

mikeh, on Dec 30 2005, 09:20 AM, said:

BTW, phil, if you preempted with AKQJxxx and led the 2, no player with a pulse would get that wrong: they'd fly with the 10.

Sure Mike - but I wouldn't have a story either

[awm]

I've actually had fair success underleading aces against suit contracts, and in general I prefer to underlead an ace rather than a king. Of course, there's a time and place for everything, and I think others have already commented on most of the features needed to underlead an ace.

On another note, there are interesting inferences from partner's lead tendencies. For example, partner leads a small heart against 4♠:

---

Declarer plays low from dummy. What do you play? If you know partner would virtually never underlead an ace, then the ♥Q will give the suit away, whereas the ♥7 will be successful when partner lead from ♥J9x(x). On the other hand, if you know that partner would virtually never underlead a jack, it seems obvious to play the queen since it cannot matter if declarer has the ace and jack, but the queen will be right if partner underlead the ace.

I actually know plenty of players who will swear up and down that underleading a jack is bad bridge. And I certainly know plenty of players who would never underlead an ace against a suit contract. Personally, I almost never underlead kings. Regardless of the merits of these types of leads, if you know that partner holds one of these opinions, you are at a distinct advantage on the defense. It's interesting that this information can also be useful to declarer, but there's nowhere to disclose it on a normal convention card and I have never heard any declarer ask about this type of thing. Seems like an interesting problem of ethics and disclosure.

[mikeh]

awm, on Jan 1 2006, 01:49 AM, said:

I've actually had fair success underleading aces against suit contracts, and in general I prefer to underlead an ace rather than a king.

You are in a very, very small minority.

[FrancesHinden]

Quote

Regardless of the merits of these types of leads, if you know that partner holds one of these opinions, you are at a distinct advantage on the defense

Yes. I think I have mentioned before that my partnerships generally prefer to make very aggressive leads against suit contracts. This helps enormously with inferences during the defence: e.g. if there are two unbid suits and partner leads from xxx in one of them, he didn't have something like K10xx in the other because he would have led it.

I agree that there isn't a space anywhere on the cc for disclosure, but I've certainly asked experienced partnerships about their leading tendencies in the past.

[Winstonm]

An opening lead story.

I was playing a pairs event with a friend in a Las Vegas sectional and came up against the late Byron Greenburg and his partner, who shall remain nameless.

The first board had the auction of 1N-3N by the opponents. I had no real good lead to make so elected to try a deceptive play with the J from Jxx and hit gold.
Byron's dummy held AK9x of the suit and declarer the Qxx. Eventually declarer finessed and lost to the 10xx. You could see the steam start to rise.....and finally, director!

I thought RHO had lost his mind.

RHO wants the director to ask if we have an agreement to lead this way as our card is marked low. Director asks partner if he had ever seen me do this before. In all the years - off and on - that I have played I had never had the occassion to make this lead, but only recently in a club game an almost identical opportunity had arisen and I had again led an unsupported jack - twice in my lifetime and they both happened to be with this partner and within the span of one month. So partner honestly answered that yes he had seen me make this lead before.

So now director in his great wisdom tells me that we have to alert this lead agreement from now on.

I was beside myself. I said, you mean anytime I decide to falsecard I have to alert the opponents? The director backpedalled with an er...a..

I was livid by this point - I hadn't played in a while and I was certain this director was just coddling the "known" player and expected us to just go along with it.

Wrong!

I continued, you are saying that I always have to lead what is on my card so "xyz" here will always know how to play the hand? I can't ever make him guess? That's ridiculous. I was on a roll now and said, neither of us are members of the ACBL (at that time) and if you try to enforce that ruling we'll get up and leave right now.

I guess at this point the concept of having to find two subs for an entire tournament was more of a concern than appeasing "xyz" so after suitable mumblings and fumblings and a review that indeed we had no agreement to make this type of lead, that it was an abberation and a falsecard lead, the director reversed himself and disappeared as quickly as possible.

The next board arrived and the auction began, 1H by me, 1S by pard, 2C by me, 3S by pard and I alerted: RHO asked - just what I wanted. I looked at him and said, "Might be a bad bid."

The director was not summoned.

Winston

[Trinidad]

Chamaco, on Dec 30 2005, 04:45 AM, said:

The first issue is:

Under which circumstances might it be ok to underlead an Ace vs a suit contract ?

Much less than most think: Almost never.

However, there are some situations where it is mandatory to underlead your ace. Assume the opponents bid like this:

1♠-3♠;
4♣-4♥;
4♠.

Both declarer and dummy have denied a diamond control. You are going to lead diamonds asap. But with ♦ATx you will lead the x. Partner is marked with the king. If you lead the ace, you will develop declarer's queen. If you lead the x, you can take 3 tricks as soon as partner has the ♦KJx, whether the ♦Q is in dummy or with declarer. So, leading the ace can blow a trick, underleading cannot cost.

Rik