28th Feb – Board 19: East/West Vul. Dealer South.
The need to have a complete understanding of the rules governing opening leads could hardly be better demonstrated than on the hand shown below where only too often catastrophe struck before anyone had got into first gear.
I like the above auction but if some of you are worried about East inventing a suit you shouldn’t be, assuming of course that West has the good sense to go for the no-trump game rather than support clubs, with his doughty holding in the unbid suit. On the lead of the
♥8 – the technically correct lead from that holding – you might think that declarer was doomed to failure with the queen of diamonds being badly placed. But look what happened. Every time South played the jack and the suit became irrevocably blocked! But why play the jack? North cannot be leading from a doubleton as the
♥8 is the lowest heart out from South’s perspective, and North cannot have started with KQ8 or he would have led the king. The only holding he can have is Q108, K108 or A108 so South should play low and return the
♥4 when he gets in with the
♦Q. North, knowing that declarer cannot have the
♥J because he hadn’t won the first trick with it, will of course unblock the queen and now communication is established to the South hand. It really isn’t rocket science.
I agree with the analysis. However in positions like this I'm usually inclined to lead the 10 (or even the Q!) and not the 8...
ReplyDeleteNick M
Your point is a good one and the lead of the ten is superior to the Queen in case declarer has AJx and partner has K9xxx. But regardless of that on the actual hand South should not be in any difficulty as long as they try and make some sense of the lead, the main point being that it cannot be 'top of nothing'.
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