[vuroth]

Apologies if this question is trivial or stupid. This decision gave me pause at the table, and I wasn't sure what the right answer was. Now that I've played the hand, I'm afraid the result might be influencing my judgement.

Scoring: IMP

---

Bidding:
1♠ P 2♣ P
2♦ P 3♦ P
3♥ P 3NT P
4NT P 5♠ P
6♦ P P P

The play:
♠6 ♠8 ♠9 ♠T
♠A ???

[dicklont]

♥2
Don't ruff, maybe you 4-card makes declarers live difficult.
I don't like the lead, it helps declarer develope spades, which could be expected.

[P_Marlowe]

Discard. Why throw a likely trump trick away?

What ever your agreements, for me this would be
H9, neg. for hearts.

Of course you may reconsider, why did you lead a spade
in the first place?

It is their suit, i.e. getting an ruff immediate was remote
at best, it was their suit, they will have the Ace, and you
have a near certain trump trick.

The normal choice would have been a heart.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[vuroth]

P_Marlowe, on Oct 9 2008, 06:33 AM, said:

Of course you may reconsider, why did you lead a spade
in the first place?

Yes, this is an awfully good question.

I need to start questioning my "automatic" plays and leads, even singletons against a trump contract.

[dicklont]

For serious study read Mike Lawrences (who else?) book Opening leads.

[y66]

Looking at dummy, I think I'll ruff. Maybe pard has ace and king of hearts and the king of clubs and declarer has something like AKQxx xxx AT9x x.

re: opening lead, I have the same problem. Not easy to fix this. Having a partner who's interested and willing to go over this part of the game helps.

[FrancesHinden]

I also don't like the spade lead, although it obviously could have worked out well:
- it is round into declarer's hand, who has 5+ spades and a strong hand, so it may pick up partner's honour holding; declarer would not have played for this spade layout otherwise.
- dummy has shown clubs, diamonds and a heart stop (assuming 3H was fourth suit forcing), so a singleton in dummy is not a surprise

As for what to do on the ace of spades, the one thing I am sure of is that this isn't a B/I problem, not least because I've got no idea!

My immediate reaction is to ruff it. I don't think we have a probable trump trick. After we have turned up with a singleton spade, declarer is going to play us for trump length if he has to guess. And if declarer wanted to, he could have ruffed a spade low in dummy without cashing the ace. In fact, I can't work out why declarer has played the ace of spades at all...

[Codo]

The lead was

But after I lead it, I have to do my work now. If I discard, so will dummy. A third round will be played, I discard and so will dummy.

I will ruff low, when he overruffs and play Club and club ruff, I will discard my last club on the third spade, hoping for a miracle.

Ruffing makes it difficult for him with f.e. AKQJx,Kxx,Axxx,x, true the hope is
small, but what will I gain from discarding?

For all those who discards: If you discard a heart, which hand do you play for that gives you a chance for success?

[FrancesHinden]

Codo, on Oct 9 2008, 02:24 PM, said:

Ruffing makes it difficult for him with f.e. AKQJx,Kxx,Axxx,x, true the hope is
small, but what will I gain from discarding?

For all those who discards: If you discard a heart, which hand do you play for that gives you a chance for success?

Declarer can't have this hand.
If he has, f.e. AKQJ10 Kxx A10xx then his obvious line is to draw trumps.
(note that he has to have at least one of the 10 and 9 of diamodns)

[vuroth]

As it turned out, opponents had overbid, and they were down 2 pretty much regardless of how poorly I defended.

I was looking to take a lesson from the hand regardless of the result, and I think that lesson is to be found in the opening lead.

Thanks.

V