Which Spot? by Ben Norton

A: ♠3. You’re going to lead your partner’s suit, and seeing as you haven’t raised Spades it’s very important that you lead your lowest card, to give partner count in the suit. If you were to lead your second-highest Spade, partner would play you for a doubleton. If you had supported Spades at a lower level, thereby making it almost impossible for you to have a doubleton, you would have led the Seven to deny an honor, although some partnerships lead the top card from x x x when they’ve supported their partner.

Your result so far:

A: ♥8. East surely has the ♦K to justify his 3NT bid, therefore if you lead a Diamond there’s a good chance that declarer will sweep up nine tricks with the aid of the Club suit, which rates to be running. Instead you should try and get partner on lead for a Diamond switch. Dummy has Spade length, so Hearts represents the best chance to get partner in. The only problem is, if you lead the traditional ♥2 partner might well return the suit, hoping to cash five tricks in the suit if he has ♥A x x x x, for example. Therefore you need to feign weakness in Hearts by leading the Eight. Partner will read this as being second-highest from a poor holding and he will see that there’s no future in the suit. If he can win the first trick he will switch to a Diamond, the Ten if he has it.

It might be that declarer has nine tricks and you need to cash out now, or it could be that you need to set up a Heart trick. The ♥8 lead caters to both situations. If it turns out that you can't run the Diamond suit then you can always switch back to Hearts if necessary.

Your result so far:

A: ♠9. You need to lead a Spade in the hope of setting up tricks there when partner has length, but it could easily be necessary to lead the Nine. The Nine could serve to pick the Ten up in dummy (for instance if there’s A 10 x on table and declarer has Q 7 x), or it could even unblock the suit if partner has something like Q x x x x and no quick outside entry. Don’t worry about partner misreading the lead, the Nine can only be a singleton, top of a doubleton or from an H 9 8 sequence, since you’d lead the Ten from a suit headed by the Ten and Nine. It’s unlikely that you’d lead from shortness, especially when you have the majority of the defensive strength, so the Nine can only be from H 9 8.

Your result so far:

A: ♠4. Contrary to hand two, this time you need to feign strength by leading your fourth-highest Spade, as if you had an honor. You know which suit the defense needs to establish tricks in, so you need to encourage partner to continue Spades when he gains the lead. You have two surefire entries in the red suits so it’s likely that you’ll be able to establish and cash the Spades. The problem with leading your second-highest is that partner might switch if he wins the first trick or a later one, thinking that there’s no future in Spades. But there is future in the Spade suit! Declarer will need to knock out both your Aces and if partner has a stopper in one of the other suits as well then you might only need him to have a doubleton Spade.

Your result so far:

A: ♦10. You need to alert partner to the fact that you’re void in Spades. The Ten, an unusual card, acts as a suit preference signal for a Spade switch. If partner wins trick one and can see the Nine either in dummy or in his hand he will realise what’s going on and give you a ruff. Conversely, if you had a Club void you’d lead your smallest card and hope partner can work it out. If your Diamonds were K 10 9 x x then it becomes more difficult, since the Ten would just be a normal looking lead from a Ten-Nine sequence. You’d probably have to try your fifth-highest and rely on partner to deduce that it’s an unusual card, and that in this case you can’t have a Club void because of the amount of Clubs against Spades missing from his view.

Remember that you have a partner across the ways. He’ll attempt to read your spot card lead, so try and guide him in the right direction and consider the potential ramifications of your decision.

Your result so far: