[rogerclee]

I thought this was the most interesting of all the threads you started Frances, I hope you will post the results and your thoughts on this problem.

[FrancesHinden]

I thought this was an interesting lead problem of itself.
In BW, you don't get to find out what the full lie is, you should consider it as an abstract problem.
I think you should lead a heart, although I am torn between the ace and the queen.

That's a warning that the full hand is going to be a disappointment, because the only lead to beat it is a diamond (sorry). Codo was right, that you have to not give the 9th trick on the opening lead. At the table, they played in 4D at one table, and I played in 3NT at the other. LHO tried a club lead to be passive, but that didn't work, because their hands are:

9x
xx
K5xx
J10xxx

AJ8x
Kx
A10987
AQ

I leave it as an exercise for the reader how to make it on a black suit lead lead
(RHO made it easy by not inserting an honour when I led a spade from the dummy, but it's still cold anyway)

p.s. the king of spades lead would be interesting

[rfedrick]

FrancesHinden, on 2013-May-16, 13:54, said:

I leave it as an exercise for the reader how to make it on a black suit lead lead
(RHO made it easy by not inserting an honour when I led a spade from the dummy, but it's still cold anyway)

So RHO didn't have ♥9xx then.

[gszes]

heart Q

Unless the heart K is trick 9 the downsides of leading the Q are few--

We do not lose out when p has the club A or KQ since the opps can't
run 9 tricks without clubs or spades. Leading the A can really be damaging
to the defense in many distributional cases u give up the heart K anyway
(except for those rare stiff K scenarios). Opps may be able to navigate
their way to 9 tricks via clubs/dia/heart K spade A. OUCH

I do not pin much hope the dia Q will win a trick but leading the heart A
will virtually guarantee it wont take one (JLOGIC).

[FrancesHinden]

here's another layout when the HA is the winning lead:

QJx
xxx
J10xxx
Kx


A
Kxx
A98xx
AQxx

I'm not saying you should play for this, but just observing that it's not _only_ stiff king where it gains...

[MickyB]

Isn't 3N cold on that layout?

Edit: Ignore that, I've seen it now

[FrancesHinden]

What does East discard on the second round of hearts?

Edit: I'll leave my reply for the next person who needs a hint

[Trinidad]

Very nice, Frances.

But I think I will need to practice a little more before I will consistently make that obvious discard.

I will need to practice a lot more before I can envision this on opening lead.

Rik