[Hanoi5]

MP's

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What should you lead? What's your partner double? What do you make of the bidding?

[bigbenvic]

 Hanoi5, on 2013-December-17, 20:59, said:

MP's

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What should you lead? What's your partner double? What do you make of the bidding?

I'd lead the unimaginative QH. Hope for partner to have a singleton and give him a ruff. I take his double to be penalty based, we've found a fit so though pass from him wouldn't be forcing it would show doubt as to defend or play, double says he has little doubt,

I wouldn't have overcalled this at that vul but I am a wimp!

North probably has 4 Spades and didn't double 1H so he was waiting to penalty pass it, perhaps he has 5 of them too?

[Fluffy]

declarer is 4216, lead [i]10 to tap him ASAP

[billw55]

Double means partner thinks I had my bid.

[Antrax]

Fluffy, what's with the lack of negative double then?

[helene_t]

Dummy is short in diamonds and declarer has good spades. I don't have too much confidence in the tap.

I will lead a heart since I think the best of all our microscopic chances is that p can get two heart ruffs. The fact that this got posted as a lead problem gives me some hope. Otherwise I would have agreed with Bill.

[mikeh]

I would lead the heart Q.

It may well be that declarer has Fluffy's hand, but we don't rate to tap him out anyway, since responder may well be 4=5=2=2 due to the lack of the negative double coupled with bidding game. Indeed, it is possible that partner is void in hearts, as Helene implied.

As for the bidding...it sucks. Overcalling 1♥ makes no sense to me, and having overcalled I have no business bidding 3♦ voluntarily. Aggression is justifiably a good thing most of the time, but bidding has to be subject to some degree of discipline or it ceases to be a partnership game. We are red. We have a bad, short suit. We have poor honour location (4 of our points are in a short suit) and we have a very weak hand.

We should have a purpose for bidding. I have no idea what that purpose was other than to hear the sound of our own voice.

[Jinksy]

I'll lead a top C, probably the A for my bidding.

[MickyB]

I'd have bid the same way and wouldn't have considered it close. Now I'll lead the ♥Q.

[mikeh]

 Jinksy, on 2013-December-18, 11:21, said:

I'll lead a top C, probably the A for my bidding.

Did you read the auction correctly? Declarer bid clubs! And you're attacking his source of tricks, while finessing partner, and surrendering a tempo? I suspect you simply misread the auction. I can't think of a worse lead than a club...even a spade is better, and it is awful.

[ggwhiz]

I'm leading a club hoping for KQx or Axx with partner.

They can't have a trump stack and not controlling declarers club suit would make the defensive nature of partners double unlikely. If it's a heart ruff needed we may still have time for it.

I like to mix it up at mp's and would have overcalled too and my partner knows this.

[mikeh]

 ggwhiz, on 2013-December-18, 11:38, said:

I'm leading a club hoping for KQx or Axx with partner.

They can't have a trump stack and not controlling declarers club suit would make the defensive nature of partners double unlikely. If it's a heart ruff needed we may still have time for it.

I like to mix it up at mp's and would have overcalled too and my partner knows this.

How many clubs are you expecting in dummy? Your partner needs 3+ to give you a ruff, and declarer, who bid into a live auction didn't do this on a balanced hand, especially when his partner implied fewer than 4 spades by his failure to negative double (please note I said implied not showed or promised). I would lay long odds that declarer has 6 clubs most of the time, so how are we ruffing any club?

Those who play for the tap or for a club ruff aren't thinking (imo) about how the other 3 hands must lie. It isn't enough to infer that we can ruff a club unless we think dummy can't overruff, and it isn't enough to infer declarer to be 4=2=1=6 and play for a tap unless we think partner has only 5 diamonds....and even then we have to infer dummy's heart length and residual shape.

If I had this auction, I'd expect them to make on any lead, but partner expects me to lead hearts when he doubled, not a club....and he isn't expecting to beat it on a diamond lead either.

[MrAce]

Mike, we don't read the auction in "interesting hands" forum. We read the forum title and make our lead

Joke of course, i would lead ♥ Q in a split second, i am sure Hanoi will tell us that we were wrong pretty soon.

[madongjun]

South had clubs and spades,so I would lead diamond 10,expect gain for 2 spades&1 diamond&1 heart,down 1.

[kuhchung]

Funny, I thought the 1H overcall here was totally fine and the 2D overcall in the other thread (xx Qxxx AQJxx KQ) was really nuts, haha.

[Jinksy]

 mikeh, on 2013-December-18, 11:33, said:

Did you read the auction correctly? Declarer bid clubs! And you're attacking his source of tricks, while finessing partner, and surrendering a tempo? I suspect you simply misread the auction. I can't think of a worse lead than a club...even a spade is better, and it is awful.

Depends on why P is Xing. If I think it's to show a void/specifically requesting a lead of my suit, I'll lead a H. If it's asking me not to I won't.

Otherwise, I agree with billw55's assessment. We're heavy underdogs in this case, so I'm not looking for a passive lead, but something that's going to generate tricks on a good day, such as a ruff, hoping for Cs eg 2335 clockwise from me.

Meanwhile, P should at least be offering values that will work on defence. That's not D honours, and H honours are going to be less than normally valuable. My lead is unlikely to be relevant to any S honours, so I'll look at Cs. Maybe he has such as KQx and a red ace.

[nige1]

 Hanoi5, on 2013-December-17, 20:59, said:

MP's
What should you lead?
What's your partner double?
What do you make of the bidding?

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IMO

• ♥Q = 10, ♦x = 9, ♠A = 8, ♣x = 6.
• Penalties. Partner may be doubling on pure power. When the partnership have bid 2 suits, double may mean "Lead your own suit!". Your best hope, however, is that partner has ♣, in which case a trump lead is worth consideration.
• The auction seems unremarkable but defensive prospects are bleak.

[mikeh]

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, and realizing that the actual hand may well not mesh with my reasoning (after all, a heart lead seems normal and yet the problem was posted, suggesting normal didn't work), I think that this setup, with just the auction and our hand known, gives rise to some interesting lessons in inferential thinking.

When leading on any auction, and especially against an unusual auction, it pays to think about how the cards lie and, this being critical, about partner's situation.

I think those who lead a club have made a common mistake. They look at their hand, come up with a layout on which the club lead would work, and then make that lead without analyzing the hand from the perspective of partner.

This gets a little complex, but it isn't as hard to do at the table as it is to type it out.

Dummy has a long heart suit, and was probably playing for penalties. It is possible he has a weak hand with lots of shape....5=5 or 5=6 majors, and was worried that bidding 1♠ would lead to a horrible problem next hand...but it is likely, given that he lept to game, that he has real values and felt that playing for penalties was a better choice, even at the 1-level, than making a negative double.

Partner can be assumed to know this.

Declarer came into a live auction, bidding spades even tho the auction told him that it was very unlikely that his partner held 4+ spades. Therefore S has not only extra values but also shape...he had to be prepared to hear his partner bid 3♣ with a bad hand unable to bid 2♣ over our 1♥.

Therefore declarer is favourite to hold 6 clubs..he may have only 5 but if so they are likely to be strong and I would expect a good player to hold 6 clubs 90% of the time.

I would also expect partner to work this out.

Please note how critical it is to think about what partner will be expecting from the auction.

Now, imagine you are partner, and you hold KQx in clubs and no spade trick.

Do you, for one moment, want partner to lead clubs? Why?

Your partner bid both red suits, and the opps bid both blacks and voluntarily bid game and you 'expect' partner to (a) work out that you want a club lead and (b) hold a quick defensive trump trick and © that dummy will hold 3 clubs and (d) that he has a safe entry in a red suit to give you that ruff

Really?

Let me put it this way: if I were East, and had made that parlay and seen it work, I'd rush out and buy a lottery ticket, because the odds on the lottery are a lot better than the odds on my bidding.

Ok, partner almost certainly didn't double wanting or expecting a club lead. However, unless we can come up with a plausible layout where we can beat the contract another way, we may lead a club out of desperation.

Let's revisit the clues again. How are the hearts? Surely this auction is consistent with

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Now, maybe you think the final double is a bit aggressive, but I suggest that it makes far more sense that assuming that he doubled on KQx of clubs, counting on that for 2 tricks, plus 2 on the side.

I stress that by no means am I pretending to predict the hand. I suspect that the actual hand will prove nothing or, if it does, it won't be accepted as such by those who selected a 'losing' lead. I also accept that maybe there are errors in the approach I have taken, and (if so) I would be pleased (really, I would!) to learn about them...that way my game may improve. Otherwise, I hope this helps.

[Hanoi5]

I'm really sorry Mikeh is mistaken but dummy held four spades and six hearts to the K, Jx in diamonds and the singleton club 10; Declarer held 4 spades, six solid clubs and Ax in hearts with a singleton diamond. After a diamond lead there was no way to make 4 tricks.

[mikeh]

 Hanoi5, on 2013-December-20, 13:24, said:

I'm really sorry Mikeh is mistaken but dummy held four spades and six hearts to the K, Jx in diamonds and the singleton club 10; Declarer held 4 spades, six solid clubs and Ax in hearts with a singleton diamond. After a diamond lead there was no way to make 4 tricks.

I wasn't pretending to predict the hand, and frankly doubt that I would have bid game as North....for the weak jump, especially looking at 2-1 minors, I would have expected 5=6 or 5=5, not 4=6, as I wrote.

However, and well knowing that a single hand proves little, I hope that my discussion of how I arrived at a heart lead was helpful to some readers.