Archives - Reading Partner's Lead

Reading Partner's Lead

It's not always obvious what Partner is leading from, especially after uninformative uncontested auctions. Is it shortness, or from length? Here are some examples where the Partner of the opening leader has some deductive work to determine what is going on.

Related Play Problems Play Problem 97

Related Extracts from Past Wednesday Games

♠ 432

♥ K984

♦ QT652

♣ 8

From 22nd November, 2006

♠ AQ8

♥ QT3

♦ A

♣ AKQJT4

          North

West        Dummy

          South

♠ T975

♥ J762

♦ J97

♣ 96

Dlr West
Vul N-S

♠ KJ6

♥ A5

♦ K843

♣ 7532

West North East South

2♣ Pass 2♦ Pass

3♣ Pass 3♦ Pass

3NT Pass Pass Pass

East’s 2♦ was a “waiting” bid, which could be made on a multitude of hand types, including some good hands which do not have a suit worth bidding. 3♦ was the so-called “second negative”, confirming a bad hand.

It turns out that 3NT is a lucky make. First of all, Dummy has the magic 9♣ as an entry, and second, the Spade finesse works, and that will be 9 tricks. Actually, it could even be 10 tricks unless South is at the top of her game. North leads the 5♦, Declarer craftily calls for the deceptive Nine, and South must decide whether to play low (hoping that Declarer has the singleton Ace) or high (in case Declarer has no Diamond stop). It would certainly cause great hilarity (for E-W, anyway), if South played low and it turned out that the 62 opposite J97 had produced a stopper! On the other hand, she would squander a trick if the plays the King under the stiff Ace.

Any clues from the bidding? Yes, we think so. We’d expect West to have 6 Clubs for this auction, which means that North has just one. We’d say that this makes it more than likely that Declarer has a 5^th Diamond. Sure, she might be 4-4-4-1, and she might have selected a Diamond in preference to her 4-card majors, but we think it’s more likely that she chose a Diamond because it’s her longest suit. One more clue … might West not have suppressed his Club suit with 3-2-2-6 or 2-3-2-6 distribution and gone straight for No Trump? So, weighing the evidence we would risk some E-W hilarity by playing low. This is the winner, holding Declarer to 9 tricks.

♠ AK9

♥ KJ864

♦ 875

♣ Q4

13th December, 2006

♠ 652

♥ A75

♦ JT

♣ K9862

          North

West             East

       Dummy

♠ QJ843

♥ 932

♦ 92

♣ A73

Dlr South
Vul E-W

♠ T7

♥ QT

♦ AKQ643

♣ JT5

South West North East

1♦ Pass 1♥ Pass

2♦ Pass 3♣ Pass

3♦ Pass 3NT All Pass

North’s 3♣ was a variation of New Minor Forcing, investigating a 5-3 Heart fit on the way to 3NT.

Against 3NT, East must attack Clubs if the defense is to get 4 tricks. But East is more likely to start with the 4♠, his 4^th best … Declarer may try a tricky false card here, winning with the King instead of the Nine … he then knocks out the A♥, and hopes that a sleepy West shoots back a Spade, playing Declarer for KQ tight in Spades. If West falls for this ruse, Declarer will no doubt chortle inwardly as she wraps up 12 tricks.

But West would truly have to be dozing to be taken in that way. Partner led the Four, and West should figure out that there is some jiggery-pokery going on by using any one of these thought processes:

- Playing 4th best leads, Partner cannot have more than 5 Spades, if he led the Four and if the Two is in West’s hand. So North has at least 3 Spades, and her K♠ must be bogus (she could have won the trick more cheaply)

- If Declarer started with KQ tight, then Partner was dealt AJ9843 and the Four is not his 4^th best

- The Rule of Eleven tells us that North has three Spades higher than the Four … the calculation is: 11 minus Partner’s spot card gives us 7, of those 7 we can see 2 cards higher than the Four in Dummy, two in our hand, that leaves 3 remaining for Declarer’s hand.

If West fell from grace by failing to consider the evidence, then a well-earned top for Declarer thanks to her heads-up false-card.