[pclayton]

♠AQ ♥A9862 ♦Q952 ♣32

1♣ on right, you overcall 1♥, 2♥ on left (ostensibly a limit raise + in clubs), 3N on right.

Your lead?

[Winstonm]

I'm not going to try to be a hero here - I think my best chance, given that declarer has most likely 5 clubs and 2 diamonds or 4 clubs and 3 diamonds plus a heart, is to find partner with the J7x of hearts and a club card. In this case I would rather lead the 9 of hearts so partner doesn't have to make the hero play of the 7 when dummy holds 10x. Perhaps these are the hands:

---

[whereagles]

Yeah.. heart for me as well. I have too much hcp for pard to be able to cooperate in diamonds.

[Free]

Low ♦, but ♠A is a close second imo. I don't think much can come out of leading ♥, and where are all the ♠s?? The problem is that partner probably doesn't have much entry's for when his ♠s may get high. And if he has ♠KJxxx he'll get a second chance.

[joshs]

Partner has a bad hand on this auction. The most I can hope for is about a K and a J and thats pretty optimisitic. There are 2 things I can play for:
Kxxxx of diamonds and the suit breaking. This requires a diamond lead.
2 or 3 hearts from partner, and the suit 3-2 or 3-3 in the opps hands. In addition to this the opps have 5 clubs, 2 hearts and 2 diamonds for 9 tricks, unless partner has a trick in the minors. So a heart lead requires hearts breaking and partner having a valuable card in Either minor. And the Diamond lead just requires diamonds, but partner has to have A or K 5'th or J 5'th and a club trick.
These seem about equally likely.

I don't think the Spade ace is a reasonable alternative (partner needs KJxxx and the suit 3-3 or the T or a 6'th card).

[flytoox]

Low diamond. Diamond J and T is what I need from pd. If pd has spade K and J, no rush. I can swithc to spade after winning my heart ace.

[pclayton]

Scoring: IMP

---

Look at the spade suit. The 7 spot is the only thing that prevents declarer from making an overtrick!

I led a low diamond. Pard won and......shot back a HEART. He thought I might have had KQxxx and this is one of those hands where we need to get our heart trick and shift back to diamonds. This layout would also be logical if declarer has a slightly stronger spade holding; say QJxx

I mentioned that if that was the case, declarer has botched the hand by not rising with the A♦ at T1.

Sure, I can still beat the hand by rising with the A♥ and putting the Q♦ on the table.

This wasn't going to happen today.