[TWO4BRIDGE]

Opps bid unopposed:
1D - 3NT

Your lead holding:
♠A Q J 5 4
♥A 4
♦J 4 3 2
♣6 3

[Endymion77]

♠A

[whereagles]

+1 for the spade ace. Got high hopes to set this one.

[mycroft]

First, what's 3NT? If it's the newish-standard "no 4cM, 13-15", partner can have a card. If it's oldish-standard "no 4cM, good 16-18", she likely won't.

May still lead the ♠A, maybe hoping partner might tell me about the ten. At MPs, we might have just given the minor suit raiser their tenth trick. But if partner can have a card (doesn't have to be the ♠K, could be the ♦Q or a club useful card) it's more likely we can get four spades and a trick.

What are we pitching on the run of the clubs?

Having said all of that, I don't see where any other lead than a spade has any advantage (except, I guess, underleading the ♥A into partner's K).

[gszes]

spade A

With a good chance p is broke or declarer can finesse
them safely treating us as the danger hand----a small
spade seems misplaced since it can all too easily give
the opps 2 possible spades (K that they rate to have and
the T where they are 2/1 favorites). Starting with the ace
is no guarantee of success but with declarer having less
than 4 spades the odds are in our favor of setting up
spades and since we have a side entry there is no reason
to risk the normal play of the spade Q or J depending on
carding) who knows maybe we will get lucky and drop the
stiff K from rho who was trying to protect it in order to play 3n:)

[Zelandakh]

Would the 4 of you still choose the ace if that was the strong (unblock/count) lead or switch down to the Q/J in that case?

[whereagles]

Still the ace. Pard rates to have little to nothing, so it doesn't matter much, as stuff will be clear by trick 2.

And if he happens to unblock a would-be ♠K, it's fine by me

[TWO4BRIDGE]

TWO4BRIDGE, on 2014-May-13, 17:44, said:

Opps bid unopposed:
1D - 3NT

Your lead holding:
♠A Q J 5 4
♥A 4
♦J 4 3 2
♣6 3

The A, Q or J needed to be led.
Anything else allowed Declarer to win the race.
Declarer held 3 cards ( K 9 x ) and dummy had 3 cards ( 10 x x ) .
( Declarer also needed ♥ tricks to make . )

[Zelandakh]

I have to admit, I was expecting ♠K to be singleton when we got the hand.