Lead with Barry by Barry Rigal

A: ♦9: Lead the diamond nine. The auction suggests that your opponents are stretching, your heart queen looks well-placed for the defense, and partner’s spades are also going to be located well for the defense. Thus there is no need to get active with a club lead. It feels right to me just to sit back and take what the cards have given you.

Your result so far:

A: ♣4: Does this deal look familiar? It is the same auction as the last one! The difference is that this time your hand has a badly placed spade queen, and no trump trick. So it looks like you need to get active – lead a club not a passive diamond. The two previous deals only illustrate probabilities not certainties – but that is the best you can do until dummy comes down.

Your result so far:

A: ♦J: Lead the diamond jack. Desperate measures seem to be called for here – you cannot expect to set this contract unless you can cash your diamonds out sooner rather than later. You need to hope to run some tricks in this suit before declarer can discard diamonds on one of the black suits. P.S. if you play third lowest leads, do you lead the jack or ten from this holding? It is worth discussing!

Your result so far:

A: ♥8: Fourth highest of longest and strongest is one way to go, but I’d argue that leading from four to the ace is more likely to give up an important trick than to build the defense’s fifth winner. With the spades lying badly for declarer I plan to go passive here with a top heart lead. It may not work out that way, but this feels like a hand where declarer will struggle if left to his own devices.

Your result so far:

A: ♠J: Having pushed the opponents to the four-level, do you want to get active or passive on defense? I say passive, because declarer’s heart losers are unlikely to go away. Meanwhile if the ♥A doesn’t live, or we set up dummy’s ♥K, we would regret leading a heart. The hand is far tougher without such solid spades; as it is, the lead stands out

Your result so far: