[hatchett]

Scoring: IMP

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P P 4♠ all Pass

[Walddk]

I go active: ♥7.

Roland

[whereagles]

yup, heart seems good.

[Blofeld]

Systemic low ♦.

[P_Marlowe]

spade, I go passive.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[Free]

Any lead can be successful, I go for ♣Q.

[mike777]

2D

Must be a good problem, we got all 4 suits led...

[mikeh]

Anything but a trump deserves some credit: a trump is awful....for two reasons.

The obvious and immediate reason is that it may blow a trick in the suit. The other, and more important, is that it will surely blow a tempo on the hand. Given our trump holding and relative lack of hcp and partner's status as a passed hand, this loss of tempo may be crucial.

Obviously, as against that, a lead in the 'wrong' side suit suffers from precisely these problems... but on this kind of auction, my guess is that the opps can come to 10 tricks unless we get 4 first.

As for which suit to lead, the ♣Q is the least attractive. It may mislead partner (who will play us for the J if he cannot see it in dummy or his hand) and it may blow the suit: Kxx(x) in dummy and J9x in declarer is one nightmare scenario.

And it may be dummy's long suit: dummy very likely has at least one 5+ suit, since he rates to be short(ish) in trump. My hand suggests that dummy's suit is most probably ♣.

As for the ♥ suit, this is the hyper-aggressive suit and there is something to be said for the K lead. Partner is unlikely to have a holding on which he should overtake without the Q, and it may be necessary both in the suit itself: dummy has Qxx and declarer 10x or partner cannot find the 10 from A10xx; and to hold the lead for a ♣ switch: dummy hits with AQJx in ♦ and the ♣Kxx.

But I tend to stay away from imaginative leads... the scenario one's imagination conjured up to justify the lead rarely exists and partners have a disturbing habit of being on a different, and more normal, wavelength anyway. So if I led a ♥, I'd go with the 7.

As it is, experience tells me to lead a ♦ as the best compromise between aggression and safety, so the appropriate low ♦ (for me, the lowest from 5) is my lead.

[Double !]

I lead either a low wheel or a low racket (the names of the other 2 suits in a 6-suited deck of cards: yes, they do exist.)

I never get these problems correct. The 4S bidder could have anything up to close to a 2C opener. I don't want to give declarer an extra trick by trying to see through the backs of his/her cards without the help of Luis' sunglasses. Probably wrong, but I'm leading a trump. Leads from the other holdings seem to have too much potential of giving away a trick, maybe declarer's 10th trick.

Here is what I think I know about the hand: Partner is unlikely to have more than 2 spades, possibly less. P did not open with a weak 2 or a pre-empt. P, therefore, rates to be somewhat 2-suited or 3-suited. If 2-suited (i.e. 4-4,5-4, 5-5), then P might be short in diamonds, my 5- card suit. Not good for a diamond lead. If declarer happens to be 2-suited (known to happen), then I might be preventing a ruff in the second suit with a trump lead. With partner having (theoretically: my theory, lol) relative length in 2, maybe 3 suits, declarer might have difficulty setting up any secondary suit he/she holds. If declarer has more of a 1-suited hand, then I lose a timing element versus potentially giving away a trick.
I guess what I am saying is that I'm not clear at this point that any tricks that we have are necessarily going away on a long suit in dummy as long as P has some honor in that suit.

So I lead a spade, and finesse partner out of his Qxx and screw up the defense.

Actually, I am interested in the reasoning behind others' choice of opening lead so I can see all the places where my reasoning has been faulty.

DHL

[whereagles]

mikeh, on Jul 12 2006, 05:47 PM, said:

As it is, experience tells me to lead a ♦ as the best compromise between aggression and safety, so the appropriate low ♦ (for me, the lowest from 5) is my lead.

There's a technical argument against the diamond lead. If you blow a trick by leading from a king, you're less likely to see it back if you're long in the suit led. E.g.

.....Qxx
KJx......Txxx
.....Axx

Even if you lead from the king, you might still make that king,

........Qxx
Kxxxx.....JTx
........Ax

whereas here you blow it for good.

Not that this argument is that important..

[mikeh]

whereagles, on Jul 12 2006, 01:25 PM, said:

mikeh, on Jul 12 2006, 05:47 PM, said:

As it is, experience tells me to lead a ♦ as the best compromise between aggression and safety, so the appropriate low ♦ (for me, the lowest from 5) is my lead.

There's a technical argument against the diamond lead. If you blow a trick by leading from a king, you're less likely to see it back if you're long in the suit led. E.g.

.....Qxx
KJx......Txxx
.....Axx

Even if you lead from the king, you might still make that king,

........Qxx
Kxxxx.....JTx
........Ax

whereas here you blow it for good.

Not that this argument is that important..

Quite correct: that is a risk. But it is countered, in my view by two factors.

The first is that if you blow a trick, it is usually only one trick. An aggressive lead in a short suit may blow a lot of tricks. Consider dummy with AQxxx in ♥ and the ♦ A.. .we lead a ♦ and knock out dummy's entry... we lead a ♥ and declarer gets 4 tricks in the suit if he holds xx.

The second is that both declarer and dummy are most likely to be short in our long suit, rather than in our short suits. Thus declarer's loser(s) in our long suit are more likely to go away on dummy's winners than are his losers in other suits.

Neither of these factors are huge, but (as you recognized) nor is the risk that leading from length, when wrong, lessens the chance of the trick still be available to you.

Making the percentage lead in these auctions is as much art as it is science, and it is interesting to see the arguments pro and con.

However, I am happy with my choice of a ♦ and, at the risk of overstating my abilities, opening leads are perhaps the best part of my game... well, there are certainly a lot of partners and ex-partners who would testify that other aspects of my game need work compared to my leads

[pclayton]

KH.

A lead from an ace or king is fairly normal and I don't this hand is an exception. I'd lead the king, as my partners have learned that I don't automatically have a doubleton when I lead like this and will signal accordingly.

I also don't want pard to have a headache holding A-T sitting over dummy's Q.

[Codo]

Q of clubs.

My opinion:
Spade is too slow.
Heart is nice if pd has one (ore more) Honour, second choice. But it is a disaster if pd has nothing.
Diamond is senseless, we won´t shorten declarer enough and we won´t get much tricks from long suits.

Clubs wins, if Pd has something like Ax, xxxx,xxx,Kxxx and we can get a late heart trick... And the possibility to be a disastrous lead if pd has nothing in Clubs are smaller then in Heart.