[Flame]

Your hand is
xx
Axxx
Axx
KQ108
The bidding goes
1♠ - D - 1NT - p
3♠ -P- 4♠ all pass
Some friends had an argument about this lead, they decided to ask aprofession player, and bet some money on his answer.
In the meanwhile i thought i'll make a poll here.
forgot to mention - scoring type is total score.

This post has been edited by Flame: 2004-September-17, 01:42

[pclayton]

Really, no second choice to the club King. Give partner a max of a queen, and give dummy a random 2344 or the like and we will need 2 clubs and our aces before the pitches are set up. Spade might even pickle partner's holding.

Of course, Declarer has the club Ace and dummy the jack AND the J♣ becomes the 10th trick. Otherwise Frederick wouldn't be posting this

[luke warm]

i voted for a trump, sorry phil... i'm afraid of 2 club ruffs in dummy

[paulhar]

luke warm, on Sep 16 2004, 08:05 PM, said:

i voted for a trump, sorry phil... i'm afraid of 2 club ruffs in dummy

If you presume that responder would raise 1S to 2S with 3 trump and a minimum that would accept the auction 1S-1NT-3S, then responder either has only two trump, or responder has a limit raise.

If responder has a limit raise opposite a 3S bid, declarer has the rest of the deck and you'll be lucky to get more than your two red aces and whatever clubs you can cash before his tricks are set up. If you're extremely lucky, that will be two club tricks.

On the other hand, if responder has only two trump and can ruff clubs (say he has a doubleton), that gives him nine red cards. Again, opener has a 3S bid and responder has about 9-10 points. Most of the red suit cards other than your two aces belong to the declaring side and if you lead a trump, declarer will promote one or both of dummy's red suits for club pitches and needless to say, won't be too unhappy about losing his opportunity to trump clubs. Let's see, between declarer's six card spade suit and dummy's five card red suit, that's ten tricks (you get the ace of dummy's five card suit) just between those two suits. That's not even counting the ace of clubs.

[Free]

Is Flame also a "Frederick"??

There are 2 dangers:
- you lead a trump and partner has Qxx
- you lead ♣K and dummy has Jxx and declarer Axx or so

Since a decent declarer will finesse your partner to have ♠Q after the Dbl, I think a trump lead is better, not giving away anything.

But I misclicked, so distract a vote from ♣K and add one for a trump

[skorchev]

Hi Flame,

I wonder why there are only 2 answers. I voted for ♣K, but if I would lead ♣ it would be ♣Q which shows ♣KQ10 at least (or second Queen).


Stefan

[Flame]

skorchev, on Sep 17 2004, 05:18 AM, said:

Hi Flame,

I wonder why there are only 2 answers. I voted for ♣K, but if I would lead ♣ it would be ♣Q which shows ♣KQ10 at least (or second Queen).


Stefan

Because Q club or K club is just the same, i only care if people think like free does, that leading the K of club is not safe enough.
Imo club is better then trump, the risk of J in dummy and A in declerer arent too high, even if there is J and A this way, we are still fine if p got doublton clubs and even if not, it will only sell if declarer can trow a loser on the club (non imidite loser) . Leading spade will be bad when p has Qxx or Kjx,or KxxKQx, or QJx, or or Qxxx,Jxxx, or Kxxx (its not out of the question that they play 7 card suit, yet rare), we dont know how many entries dummy have and maybe those are needed for other tasks, also maybe we need to open the clubs before they are discarded on dummy's long suit.

[whereagles]

King of clubs. Can turn out wrong, but I think most people would lead that at the table. Expert or not