[kfay]

Your opps bid to 3NT uncontested. You've got jack squat in your hand so you try to find partner's suit.

Say you have to decide between 2. You've got 4 cards in one suit, 3 in the other. What do you lead?

You've got 3 cards in 1 suit, 2 in the other. What do you lead?

Is there an established answer to this sort of question?

[MickyB]

Depends on the auction. What chances has partner had to bid? What have oppo indicated?

After 1N:2D, 2H:3N, a doubleton club looks a very nice lead - sounds like both oppo are pretty flat, and partner could have bid 2S or (if you play it that way) doubled 2D if he had either of those suits, but showing clubs would have been trickier. More generally, I'd tend to prefer to lead from three so as to need to find partner with less in the suit to beat the contract.

[kfay]

My question was prompted by this auction:

1N-2♣; 2♦-3N

4-3 in the majors, 3-2 in the majors, etc.

[Jlall]

longer one

[awm]

I like to lead the three-card suit rather than a four or two-card suit.

Assuming I have essentially nothing, my goal is to hit the suit we can most easily run. The best such suit will be one where partner has five (or more) and neither opponent has as many as four.

Basically I'm looking for one of the following layouts assuming balanced opponent hands:

(1) Me four, partner five, opponents two and two.
(2) Me three, partner five, opponents three and two.
(3) Me three, partner six, opponents two and two.
(4) Me two, partner five, opponents three and three.
(5) Me two, partner six or seven.

It seems like the number two situation is much more frequent than the others.

[Jlall]

Obv the shorter you lead from the more likely you are to hit partner. But when you hit partner you are more likely to do something productive when you lead from your longer one.

[Codo]

I lead the 3 card suit since some month now with a lot of success. I would bet that if it matters it is a big winner- (my feeling is about 3:1).
Obviously it does not matter much more often then it does...

[suokko]

Codo, on Dec 3 2009, 12:02 PM, said:

I lead the 3 card suit since some month now with a lot of success. I would bet that if it matters it is a big winner- (my feeling is about 3:1).
Obviously it does not matter much more often then it does...

I think I have had fair amount of successful doubleton and tripleton leads. But scoring is most often MP. I don't have any hard values but I have feeling that leading doubleton is more often good result because it reduces number of over tricks and leading from 3 cards has set opponents more often.
I would like to have some result database where I could easily search for statistic data.

Maybe someone with good simulation software could run some simulations. If there is difference how different leads work depending on scoring.

[bluecalm]

I almost always lead the longer one; I think it doesn't matter much anyway but consistency of leading the long suit make it easy for partner to read hands.