Opening Leads

by Merv Adey

No area of the game is trickier than opening leads. A brilliant opening shot can make a good contract hopeless, but more often we give contracts away through an unlucky choice. I use the word "unlucky" because selecting an opening lead is a combination of listening to the auction, applying percentage based rules which we learn in bridge "kindergarten" (fourth best etc.), and choosing a trick target with very little information. Sometimes we want to beat the contract (nearly always true at Swiss Teams). Sometimes we want to hold the overtricks and "give nothing away" at trick one.

 Recently a friendly dispute took place between partners after the simple auction 1NT - 2NT - 3NT. Our heroine held something like

           ♠ - 9xx    ♥ - KJxx     ♦ - Qxx     ♣ - Jxx

 What would you lead versus 3NT playing pairs? Let's think, a major suit lead is suggested by the auction (no stayman inquiry). A heart will be right whenever partner holds the Q or A of hearts. A spade lead will give nothing away when partner has nothing in hearts. Declarer will have to build his nine tricks by himself. He will have to guess the lie of the missing queens and things entirely by himself. A spade lead is known as a "passive" lead and it's goal is to do nothing that may help declarer. A heart lead is an "active" lead and is designed to set up tricks right away.

 Personally, I think either lead is reasonable, but I would lead the spade 9 on the basis that the auction promised the contract would be a "close" make. If the opponents had bid a confident 1N  - 3N, I would lead a heart to make sure any heart tricks we had coming were not discarded on dummy's potential long minor suit.

 Whatever you chose is fine. Bridge is full of close decisions. However, your partner will play better if you respect her decisions and she will play worse if you are always pointing out how they didn't work. Remember, when you and partner fill out a convention card, you are preparing together. When partner is declaring or making an opening lead, she is on her own.  Nothing you can say will help!