[Badmonster]

I'm doing some reading. Everyone says don't underlead a king or an ace. Kantar says don't underlead a queen or a jack. And no one agrees about what to lead from xxx, though some say try not to lead from it at all. So, What's that leave? Top of sequences? Nice work if you can get it.

More seriously, how valid is Kanar's contention that you lose more underleading your queens and jacks than your kings?

[gwnn]

It's a good idea to try to figure out what partner has and try to lead where you figure he'll have something.

top of sequence leads are always good. not always 100% best, but never ever bad. Except if you have a 13 card fit with pd

these Wise Pieces of Advice aren't as helpful as they seem.

[FrancesHinden]

Badmonster, on Jul 9 2007, 02:01 PM, said:

I'm doing some reading. Everyone says don't underlead a king....

No they don't.

Underleading a king or a queen is often right. The way to decide what to lead is usually to decide which suit the auction calls for, then lead that suit more or less whatever your holding in it (though not to the extent of underleading aces other than in very specific situations).

Only if the auction doesn't tell you which suit to lead do you start looking at your holdings in the various suits. And then, if the auction says make an aggressive lead, you lead the suit with most honours in. If the auction says make a passive lead, make the most passive lead you can.

[han]

Unless you have a really good honor-sequence, leading a suit almost always carries the risk of giving the opponents a trick in the suit. There is no possible holding where it is preferable to lead the suit yourself as opposed to making the opponents lead it. Think about it.

So that is one argument for making the most passive leads, the lead that is least likely to give up a trick. For example, a trump from xxx is likely passive (although there is no guarantee, partner could have the queen and you would make it easy for declarer). A lead from xxx is usually safer than a lead from an unsupported honor. (of course from xxx you lead the card you and your partner agreed to, why make things harder than they are!)

However, there is often a need to make an aggressive lead to take your tricks before they can take theirs. For example, in notrump you might need to set up your suit and in a suit contract you might need to take your club tricks before declarer can pitch her clubs on dummy's diamonds. An aggressive lead is often in a suit where you have honors, and is usually more likely to give away tricks.

So how do you decide? Well, you'll have to listen to the auction and look at your hand. How will declarer play the hand? If there is a strong suit in the dummy then you may need to attack, but if both dummy and declarer are 4333 then most likely you should let them start the suits and lead passively.

Of course you won't get them all right, especially when you are just starting to think about these things. So really think about your leads and look at the hands later. Did your lead work out? If not, were you just unlucky or should you have figured it out? If it did, were you just lucky or did you make the winning lead for the right reason?