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Attack or Go Passive.

It might seem obvious to say that when making the opening lead that one aims to get as many tricks for one’s side as possible. Sometimes, you attack with the risks attached of having plenty of egg on your face when the lead backfires, spectacularly! On other occasions you may choose to go passive and wait for any tricks to come from declarer’s actions.

What do you think you should do here?

 

2NT shows 20-22 balanced. What would you lead?

One observation to make is that you hold most of the defence’s high-card points. Say North-South have 25 between them. Your partner will have at most 4hcp. So, we hope that tricks will come from our various high cards, eventually. Thus, it seems a good idea to lead 9, less likely to give away a trick and most probably a very passive lead. It has the added advantage of being a major, often a good idea when the opponents have shown no interest in the major suits. Also, unless you have an obvious suit to attack, when a declarer announces at least 20 hcp, a defensive lead is often the best approach.

So, you lead 9 and this is what you see in dummy:

 

Q in dummy wins the first trick with your partner contributing 10. At trick 2, declarer calls for 10. Your partner plays J, declarer Q and you win with K. What now?

Has the situation changed? It has just a little as dummy was so weak. Your partner’s maximum point count has risen to 5 including the known J. Is it still time to be passive?

The answer is “it may be”. We know South has AK and Q and probably A as well. To reach 20 hcp, they will have at least one of the two top missing diamond honours and K but not all three. Taking a more aggressive approach might backfire if South held K and a high diamond honour as their extra high cards but otherwise, laying down A, an aggressive approach, might just be a big winner now.

On laying down A at trick 3, your partner’s card should tell you whether you have defended well:

 

If you play “low encouraging”, East will play 4. High encouraging and you should see 10. Then, you have to be brave, or really trusting your partner’s signal, and play Q and when declarer does not play K, you will soon be recording +200 with a 2-trick defeat of the contract. If you did not switch to A, South will score 9 tricks, - 600.

At the table, our West got it right but wrong! At trick 1, they led a heart but the 6. South was extremely despondent but after K then Q and A, West switched to a spade…. and South soon had 9 tricks, losing just to K after that.

When you lead a short suit against a no-trump contract, you must lead the highest (occasionally the middle card though not from AQ6) but not the bottom card. The effect of that initial 6 lead, so much the right suit for the defence, was to block the defence from taking more than 3 tricks in that suit.

A heart lead at trick 1 was a legitimate alternative, an attacking lead. It was not necessary to attack here from the start but finding the A switch at trick 3 was.

Richard Solomon

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