Contract Bridge

There are no magic rules to guide one to the best opening lead, and occasionally the wrong choice will produce a disastrous result.

Consider this deal where South wound up in six clubs doubled. Perhaps East should have opened three spades, which might have shut the opponents out of bidding. Instead, he started with one spade, allowing North-South to find their club fit.

West’s spade lead was a dubious choice, as he should have realized that North’s four-spade cuebid indicated a void in the suit and that a spade lead would therefore accomplish nothing. Whether West should have led a diamond or a heart is debatable — but his actual lead proved fatal.

Declarer ruffed the spade in dummy and led the queen of clubs, on which East followed low. South made a good guess by going up with the ace and leading five rounds of hearts, discarding all three of his diamonds in the process.

West ruffed the fifth heart, but by then the setting trick — East’s ace of diamonds — had already flown the coop. As a result, declarer made the slam and scored 1,660 points instead of going down one, which would have been his lot had West led a diamond originally.

Had it occurred to West that a spade lead was wrong, he might of course have misguessed and led a heart, in which case declarer would still have made the contract. But then again, West might have led a diamond and beaten the slam.

The bottom line is that since a spade lead did not figure to gain anything for his side, West should have dismissed it as a possibility and considered an alternative.