[phoenixmj]

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What is the best lead for West to make and why? Our leads are standard.

[billyjef]

any diamond and if partner gets a ruff, he'll know to return hearts.

[mikeh]

It’s not clear. It would be useful to have some idea about the opponents. A strong opponent will have either the heart A or a stiff in order to bid 4N. He will also have the sort of hand where he can count 12 tricks but expects one loser. With different hands than as described, he would either have bid 3S over 2S, to start a cuebidding sequence, or would bid 5N over 5H.

A bad opponent may simply keycard because he can’t imagine bidding slam any other way.

They are off an ace or the spade Queen. I am, against a good opponent, picturing something like Kxxx Ax Kx AKJxx. And declarer Axxx Qx AQxxx xx

On the heart J lead, declarer should win the Ace, cash two top spades and try to cash 3 diamonds. Partner will ruff the second and will return the heart, especially when we play the diamond 10 on the second round.

Ok, so this is a fantasy. I’m still leading the heart Jack.

[johnu]

 phoenixmj, on 2019-January-17, 21:28, said:

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What is the best lead for West to make and why? Our leads are standard.

Stalling for time, but I would ask does 2♠ show, unbalanced hand with 4 spades and extras?, and what does 5♥ show? (2 key cards without trump queen, or 2 aces?)

[The_Badger]

 mikeh, on 2019-January-18, 00:27, said:

It’s not clear. It would be useful to have some idea about the opponents. A strong opponent will have either the heart A or a stiff in order to bid 4N. He will also have the sort of hand where he can count 12 tricks but expects one loser. With different hands than as described, he would either have bid 3S over 2S, to start a cuebidding sequence, or would bid 5N over 5H.

A bad opponent may simply keycard because he can’t imagine bidding slam any other way.

They are off an ace or the spade Queen. I am, against a good opponent, picturing something like Kxxx Ax Kx AKJxx. And declarer Axxx Qx AQxxx xx

On the heart J lead, declarer should win the Ace, cash two top spades and try to cash 3 diamonds. Partner will ruff the second and will return the heart, especially when we play the diamond 10 on the second round.

Ok, so this is a fantasy. I’m still leading the heart Jack.

Yes, the opponents' strength and bidding matters here.

They are off an ace or the spade Queen. I am, against a good opponent, picturing something like Kxxx Ax Kx AKJxx. And declarer Axxx Qx AQxxx xx

Knowing how the opponents bid is very important. Some will bid out shape (2♠) after a 2/1 response; others will see 2♠ promising a reverse. Knowing these facts will change the potential cards that they might hold.

Though all said and done, everything looks potentially right for declarer except ♦ splitting, and the only potential way to defeat this slam seems to be an aggressive lead. ♥J for me, too: fingers crossed.

[phoenixmj]

 johnu, on 2019-January-18, 04:27, said:

Stalling for time, but I would ask does 2♠ show, unbalanced hand with 4 spades and extras?, and what does 5♥ show? (2 key cards without trump queen, or 2 aces?)

2 spade bid does not show extras - but it is showing a slightly unbalanced hand with spades.

They play 1430 so it was showing 2 no queen - and using spades as the trump suit since last bid.

[phoenixmj]

Two follow up questions

1. - what would you lead if they had stopped at 5 spades (same bidding sequence other than the last bid)?

2. - what would you lead if your partner doubled the 6 spades bid?

[billyjef]

I see the other posters wisdom, and upon running simulation, a heart lead has a better chance.

[nige1]

phoenixmj asks "What is the best lead for West to make and why? Our leads are standard."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I rank...
1. ♥J. Attack unbid suit. Might develop the setting trick. If partner has ♥Q, then we both guard the suit.
2. ♦4. Partner might be able to ruff.
3. ♠J. But might wrap up trumps for declarer.
4. ♣6. Neither black suit is attractive..

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[phoenixmj]

 billyjef, on 2019-January-20, 11:53, said:

I see the other posters wisdom, and upon running simulation, a heart lead has a better chance.

How did you run a simulation? Out of curiosity - how did the heart lead beat the contract? Was it that the king got set up and partner had the queen of hearts? Was it that partner could rough a diamond before they drew trump? They were missing one ace - based on the bidding. Which ace was it?

If they are good players - it technically should not be the ace hearts - else they have at least 2 losers in hearts and would not have gone to 6????????

Would love to know what the simulation assumed.

thanks in advance.

[mikeh]

 phoenixmj, on 2019-January-20, 23:20, said:

How did you run a simulation? Out of curiosity - how did the heart lead beat the contract? Was it that the king got set up and partner had the queen of hearts? Was it that partner could rough a diamond before they drew trump? They were missing one ace - based on the bidding. Which ace was it?

If they are good players - it technically should not be the ace hearts - else they have at least 2 losers in hearts and would not have gone to 6????????

Would love to know what the simulation assumed.

thanks in advance.

While they may be off an Ace, I suspect it to be more likely that they are off the trump queen. The better the opps, the more likely that appears to be to me, since LHO should be pretty much counting on 12 winners and all the keycards, not to have started a cuebidding sequence. No guarantees.

Also if we do have an Ace, I’d expect it to be the ace of hearts since no good player would leap to 4N with no heart control. That control could, of course, be a stiff. However, if that’s the case they are almost surely cold. They will have the spade queen and have a 3-2 split, and my club suit is bad news for our side. So I will assume our card is the trump queen.

[rmnka447]

It's usually right to make attacking leads against small slams. Here, there was no hesitation about bidding the slam, so we shouldn't worry too much about giving something away with the opening lead and giving them the slam. Chances are that unless we develop a second winner quickly, they'll make 12 tricks.

The only suit they haven't bid is ♥, so it looks like the best chance for that defeating trick.

I'd be inclined to make the "regular" lead of the ♥ 7. But I think mikeh's and nige1's preferred lead of the ♥ J is intriguing. With responder (the 2 ♣ bidder) seeming the stronger hand, the ♥ J might really put declarer to the test if dummy ♥ AQ and the declaring side faces a guess in the trump suit.

[mikeh]

 rmnka447, on 2019-January-22, 20:00, said:

It's usually right to make attacking leads against small slams. Here, there was no hesitation about bidding the slam, so we shouldn't worry too much about giving something away with the opening lead and giving them the slam. Chances are that unless we develop a second winner quickly, they'll make 12 tricks.

The only suit they haven't bid is ♥, so it looks like the best chance for that defeating trick.

I'd be inclined to make the "regular" lead of the ♥ 7. But I think mikeh's and nige1's preferred lead of the ♥ J is intriguing. With responder (the 2 ♣ bidder) seeming the stronger hand, the ♥ J might really put declarer to the test if dummy ♥ AQ and the declaring side faces a guess in the trump suit.

I have difficulty constructing a hand on which declarer faces a trump suit guess when we have Jx. It is pretty much impossible for the spades to be Q9xx opposite K10xx, or the equivalent, where declarer has a 2 way guess against the Jack. They’d have to really bad players to bid as they have. No, the key is surely that they have an option to ditch the heart on a side suit, and we have reason to think that this may be diamonds, and more reason to think that this won’t work, while still being the single-dummy correct line for them.

The hand has been up for a while so maybe the OP will tell us the layout.

[billyjef]

 phoenixmj, on 2019-January-20, 23:20, said:

How did you run a simulation? Out of curiosity - how did the heart lead beat the contract? Was it that the king got set up and partner had the queen of hearts? Was it that partner could rough a diamond before they drew trump? They were missing one ace - based on the bidding. Which ace was it?

If they are good players - it technically should not be the ace hearts - else they have at least 2 losers in hearts and would not have gone to 6????????

Would love to know what the simulation assumed.

thanks in advance.

I use an unstable application called Lead Captain, in fact it crashed before the simulation finished. http://www.bridgecap...eadCaptain.html . It doesn't definitively say that such and such will defeat the contract, only that some leads have a higher percentage of defeating the contract, assuming I get the parameters correct.

My memory is that a heart lead, jack or 7, were top on the list, then the diamond ten, when my computer decided it had enough. I ran it first with only 1,000 example hands, but was frustrated because the diamond lead didn't come out on top, so had it run like 100,000...LOL. It was more than 1/2 way through when it crashed, so I realized I needed to man up and concede to the heart lead.

[billyjef]

 phoenixmj, on 2019-January-17, 21:28, said:

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What is the best lead for West to make and why? Our leads are standard.

Re-looking at this hand, part of my problem was assuming the 1♦ opener's reverse into ♠ showed at least 5♦, thus the probability of a diamond ruff seemed to be significant and time sensitive.

[mikeh]

 billyjef, on 2019-January-23, 14:55, said:

I use an unstable application called Lead Captain, in fact it crashed before the simulation finished. http://www.bridgecap...eadCaptain.html . It doesn't definitively say that such and such will defeat the contract, only that some leads have a higher percentage of defeating the contract, assuming I get the parameters correct.

My memory is that a heart lead, jack or 7, were top on the list, then the diamond ten, when my computer decided it had enough. I ran it first with only 1,000 example hands, but was frustrated because the diamond lead didn't come out on top, so had it run like 100,000...LOL. It was more than 1/2 way through when it crashed, so I realized I needed to man up and concede to the heart lead.

I suspect that your simulation uses double dummy analysis. This hand is a great illustration of why that approach is of limited assistance. Double dummy, declarer will always finesse if dummy has AQ in hearts and always duck to his Queen if dummy has Ax(x) and he has the Queen. The main point of the heart lead, and especially the Jack, is to persuade the human declarer to take another line. Good luck simulating that:)

[billyjef]

 mikeh, on 2019-January-23, 15:00, said:

I suspect that your simulation uses double dummy analysis. This hand is a great illustration of why that approach is of limited assistance. Double dummy, declarer will always finesse if dummy has AQ in hearts and always duck to his Queen if dummy has Ax(x) and he has the Queen. The main point of the heart lead, and especially the Jack, is to persuade the human declarer to take another line. Good luck simulating that:)

I'm sure it does and that does need to be considered when results are considered. But again, it seems as though if something isn't absolute in it's prediction, it has no useful information. Soon, though, it seems they'll be able to simulate human shortcomings .