[pclayton]

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Club game

MP's, all vul. 2N on right (20-21), 3N on left.

Whats your opening lead?

[inquiry]

Partner has about eight hcp, maybe more. I am not leading a diamond, as we will never set those up and get back to me. I am not leading a club for the same reason. I want to set up partner's suit.

So it is between ♠ and ♥. There is advantage of both. If you lead a low spade, partner can lead that suit when in, and you can perhpas play a third round. If you start heart, you may not have a heart to lead when you get in with the spade king. It is a guess, so I will guess heart jack, unblockng, and hopefully stiking a blow in the suit my partner rates to be longest in.

Ben

[flytoox]

No obvious choice, though I vote for HJ, this could be very costly. Pd rates to have at least 4 hearts.

HJ

[mike777]

Spade 6, attack.

[luke warm]

this is very tuff... it wouldn't surprise me as much for partner to have 5 hearts as it would for him to have 4/5 spades... i think ♥2 is my lead... the J has advantages, but the 2 allows declarer to misguess

[junyi_zhu]

pclayton, on Dec 10 2004, 05:32 PM, said:

Dealer: ????? Vul: ???? Scoring: Unknown

♠ K86 ♥ J2 ♦ 7642 ♣ 9853

Club game

MP's, all vul. 2N on right (20-21), 3N on left.

Whats your opening lead?

Are you guys serious? It's MP and either D or C would be a perfect lead without costing a trick. For HJ, you gain 1 time out of more than 20 times I guarantee.

[Fluffy]

♣ to me, ♥ is a suicide at MP, i you really wanan set the contrract ♠ is the only on that doesn´t really risk a trick that much.

[pclayton]

Junyi is dead on here. This doesn't look like a hand to attack on.

Unfortunately I led a spade, and we were the pair to give up -690. Dummy had: xxx, xx, AQJx, QJTx. The J♥ doesn't work out too well, since declarer has KQ9x, however, she's not apt to get it right.

I gave the hand to Chris later who didnt think a spade was bad at all. However, he said: "Why would you make a non-field lead if you consider yourselves the best in the room"? Brian and I finished with 63.4% which was still good enough to win, but it was a STAC (Sectional Tournament at Club) all over the Western US, and with close to 400 pairs participating, our score just finished out of the money.

At IMPs, I think the spade stands out, although I think a LOW heart is intriguing. If we have the values to beat this, pard will be getting in once or twice and the J doesn't give up an instant tenace position in declarer's hand. There was a BOLS tip about this a number of years ago, but dummy was known to be strong and held AKT of the critical suit and partner had the Q and length.

[PriorKnowledge]

At IMPs I lead a spade, but at matchpoints, 8C - 2nd from top empty 4+ suit. Every time I don't lead my longest suit in a blind auction, I always regret it. Trying to hit partner is a crap-shoot. Partner could have clubs.

Never the JH. Partner needs too many to be useful and dummy is unlikely to have strength.

[cf_John0]

♠8!

[Free]

I'd probably lead ♥J

[Chamaco]

Leading a club to me does not seem wrong even at IMPS.
It may be leading through dummy strength, or removing dummy's entry prematurely, or hitting something useful from pard.

Even at IMPS, underleading spade K or leading from Jx puts all the eggs in one basket.
It may be as well that 3NT goes down (so many people raise 2NT to game on thin values) , I think that in this specific situation an attacking lead is much more likely to give declarer the 9th trick than stting up our 5th trick.

I like attacking leads but vs a 2NT opener I'd like to have good spots to underlead my honor.