11th July – Board 17: Love All. Dealer North.
Defending is hard at the
best of times but one of the best innovations in recent years is the concept of
‘strong ten’ and ‘weak jack’ leads. Basically this means that whenever a jack
is led that will be the highest card in the sequence, i.e. J108(x) and whenever
a ten is led there will be at least one higher honour. So you might have
something like AJ108 or KJ108 when previously the normal lead would be the jack
in both cases. Or again you might have A1098 or K1098 when you again lead the
ten but now you are showing a strong sequence. This arrangement would have been
useful on the following deal:
North:
S Q J 9 2
H K 5
D A K J
C Q 9 7 6
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West:
S K 10 3
H 10 9 8 7 6
D Q 4 2
C A 7
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East:
S 8 5 4
H Q J 3
D 10 9 8 3
C K 5 2
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South:
S A 7 6
H A 4 2
D 7 6 5
C J 10 6 4
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Suppose
you are declaring 3NT from the North hand. East might lead a heart in which
case the contract would easily fail, but a more likely lead perhaps is a
diamond. However playing ‘strong tens’ the lead should be the nine NOT the ten
and now when West gains the lead early he knows that there is no future in the
diamond suit and can easily find the heart switch. If East had started with
AJ109 of diamonds, say, or even A1098, then West would know from the lead of
the ten that he should continue the suit.
David just to clarify, does the 'strong 10s & weak jacks' lead apply only to NT contracts or to everything?
ReplyDeleteChris A
Yes, only to no-trumps really. Because you would (should) never really think of leading away from those AJ10x holdings and the like against a suit contract. But it is a good point and I should have stated that in the blog.
ReplyDelete