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Your Hand
♠ J
♥ A 9 8 7
♦ A Q 6
♣ K 10 9 3 2 |
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Q: 5 - What’s the plan?
South | West | North | East |
- | - | - | 1NT |
Pass | 3NT | Pass | Pass |
Pass | | | |
A: ♣3. Partner will have nothing, so it’s up to you to bring about declarer’s downfall. A Club lead carries the best hope for the defense, but which card should you lead?
Declarer’s main trick sources will be Spades and Diamonds, but any tricks he has in Spades will be ready to cash, so he’ll play on Diamonds whenever he gains the lead. In this way you will probably score two Diamond tricks and a Heart trick, and you need two more tricks. You won’t take two more Heart tricks, so you must hope to take two tricks in Clubs.
It’s traditional to lead the Ten from this holding, mainly to pick up an honor in dummy when partner also has an honor, but seeing as that isn’t possible here, the Three is the best card. This means you can pick up the suit from your side of the table when there’s H H doubleton opposite H x x x either way around in the opponents’ hands. Your fourth and fifth Clubs are so small that when one of the opponents has length in the suit, you need to retain your Ten and Nine for when you can pin one of their honors.
When leading against the auction 1NT-3NT, strive to create a plan for the defense. In general it’s best to lead your long suit unless you don’t have enough entries, in which case try to find your partner’s suit or lead the suit which your high card is in, since that is the suit you’ll be able to set up the most tricks in. Keep in mind that partner will have more major suit cards than minor suit cards most of the time, thus when you have a choice between a major and a minor, opt for the major, and when you have a decision between both majors, one should generally prefer x x x to H x x and K x x x/Q x x x to A x x x.
Your result so far: