[awm]

Scoring: IMP

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LHO is dealer, your side silent throughout. The auction goes:

1♦ - 1♠
2NT - 3♦!
3♠ - 4NT
5♦ - 6♠
Pass

The 3♦ bid was alerted as an artificial game force. 5♦ shows three keycards for spades.

What do you lead?

[hrothgar]

awm, on Nov 12 2006, 01:51 AM, said:

Scoring: IMP

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LHO is dealer, your side silent throughout. The auction goes:

1♦ - 1♠
2NT - 3♦!
3♠ - 4NT
5♦ - 6♠
Pass

The 3♦ bid was alerted as an artificial game force. 5♦ shows three keycards for spades.

What do you lead?

The opponent's didn't bother cue bidding. Weird.

I'm leading the King of Clubs. Unlikely to blow a trick and we might cash two clubs off the top.

Life will get interesting if RHO has AJx and ducks

[whereagles]

Looks like ripe for a trump lead. But I'm not given KQT vs a slam every day, so I'm gonna lead that.

[HeartA]

RHO has ♣AJX? I don't think so. It is dummy who bids 2NT and likely has ♣AJx. ♣K lead may give declarer two easy tricks. I am going to lead ST and let declarer develop his tricks.

[pclayton]

HeartA, on Nov 11 2006, 03:11 PM, said:

RHO has ♣AJX? I don't think so.  It is dummy who bids 2NT and likely has ♣AJx.  ♣K lead may give declarer two easy tricks. I am going to lead ST and let declarer develop his tricks.

But if declarer has that holding, declarer gets two tricks anyway.

I'm leading a club through elimination. A trump is pointless, although its hard to see how it could hurt. I'd never lead a diamond from this holding and on this auction. A heart could work, but there's a lot of H-9 combos on my left where this works terribly.

[brianshark]

RHO has many options to GF with distributional hands (5-5 and the like), which together with the lack of cue-bidding by the Key-card bidder suggests that they are both balanced or semi-balanced.

However, this also makes it more of a possibility that the opps stopped short of the Grand based on points rather then because of a missing keycard.

If p has a keycard that isn't a finessable trump King, the ♣K lead will almost certainly knock the slam, even if opps have AJx tenace waiting for you (cos it's less likely to go away).

However, if p has no keycard, then conceding an extra club trick may well cost the contract where a more passive defense (like ♥J) wouldn't.

I'll still always lead the ♣K, because if p has jack, or dummy AJx, the lead hasn't costed anything, even if p has no keycard.

[mike777]

KC Attack!

[Apollo81]

I see no reason to defend actively here. Spade lead for me. Let declarer work out the side suits by himself.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

King of Clubs.

Diamonds it out, and if the opponents are
trustworthy (?!) they will have the tricks,
i.e. I wont go passive.
If I decide to go passive, I lead a trump.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[mikeh]

There are hands on which a ♣ lead not only establishes the setting trick immediately (declarer has an unavoidable loser elsewhere) but on which the lead destroys a squeeze that would otherwise operate. Catch dummy with HHxx in ♦ and AJx or A9x in ♣ (with declarer in that case holding the J) or equivalent, and a passive lead allows declarer to knock out the side loser and then run the major winners, crushing your hand to a pulp.

So the ♣K has it all over the other leads. It gives up the 12th trick on a very small number of hands (LHO has Jxx and RHO Ax(x) for example. This is low percentage because LHO bid 2N and because LHO has more hcp than does RHO.

On the other hand, the lack of cue bids suggests that RHO has a ♣ control... bidding 4N on a hand on which I hold these values and partner (by necessity) holds a trick, suggests that he was not afraid of 2 quick losers in one suit.

That is a cautionary thought, but most players tend to use keycard even when they shouldn't, so I will not let that dissuade me.