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A TIME TO BE PATIENT?

Is it? Your partner has made an overcall and you are on lead with A86 of their overcalled suit. You cannot lose this post-mortem by leading partner’s suit, can you? Well, maybe not but will your action allow the contract to make?

Were you to defend a part-score contract, especially one where the declarer has an opening hand, then it would be absolutely wrong to lead your partner’s suit. With Ax, it is completely different but with a three-card suit, there is no chance of a ruff and while there may be sometimes no actual gain in leading your ace, there could easily be a loss. Your partner will gain the lead at some point and then lead their own suit.

 Your lead?

1NT is 12-14 and 2 is a natural overcall.

Not a hard decision? It could be the difference between beating or not beating this contract. That seems pretty strenuous or stressful! Don’t you love it?!

Yet, here, you are defending a game contract with a balanced hand in dummy. The K is favourite to be in your partner’s hand and if not, then in dummy. Declarer may well have a singleton heart and if dummy has the king, then you have set up an immediate discard. That is one good reason to avoid leading your ace.

Leading the ace may, however, enable you to find the best switch. After all, it will be your only time on lead to do so. Also, especially playing Pairs, where restricting overtricks is as important as beating the contract, taking your two heart tricks at tricks 1 and 2 may be vital.

Yet, there does seem as much to be said for not leading your ace as for leading it if you do aim to beat the contract. At Teams, an overtrick given away is not a terminal error (“sorry, partner, I did not see your overcall” is your lame excuse as declarer’s two heart losers disappear on a side-suit). Sometimes, there may even be a gain from a passive, let’s say, diamond lead:

 

While South is distributional, they have value too. So, there is certainly as much, maybe more to be gained from not leading your ace. As you can see, any lead except a heart beats the contract. A little unlucky, perhaps, if your ace hit the deck at trick 1, but everyone at the table had their bid. There was nothing unusual including the fact that leading partner’s suit was not altogether a great idea.

Were West to hold  Axxx, the need to lead the high heart becomes greater but with only Axx, there is a good case to be patient.

….AND NO TIME FOR PATIENCE…. 

While a little off the subject above, the following board produced a wonderful result for the defence when a somewhat desperation lead turned out golden. It had to be at trick 1…no time for patience!

 

2 was a transfer to hearts. West had two good reasons for not leading their partner’s suit. Firstly, 1 was a Precision 1 opener with East possibly having well under 4 diamonds. Secondly, if East wanted a diamond lead, they could have doubled     2.

So, West led 7, an ominous though not terminal lead for declarer. However, East won with J, took the ace (West 4) and then East produced K, West discarding a diamond. Naturally, the 3 followed. What should declarer do?

If hearts broke 3-2, it would cost declarer an extra trump trick by ruffing. Thus, declarer discarded with West ruffing with the 7. The only time when it was correct for declarer to ruff was when there were two trump losers anyway ( QJxx in East’s hand) or if West had a singleton trump honour.

 

Two further trump losers meant declarer was down 3. While a few lucky declarers managed to make this contract, a large number were down 2, mainly played by North. (a great hand to promote transfers…not!)

A great lead by Sylvester Riddell, to whom so many of us are very grateful for setting up the “Covid 19” bridge games on BBO for New Zealand players. Just poor timing, Sylvester, while I was the declarer!

I would thoroughly recommend that with QJ9652 of the suit your partner opened, that you choose to lead partner’s opening suit, while I am declarer!

A nice hand for tomorrow…plenty of potential. What action will you take?

 

The opponents are playing Acol.You are playing Teams...and the vulnerability is in your favour.

Richard Solomon

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