ACES ON BRIDGE
When you ask God to send you trials, you may be sure your prayer will be granted. — Leon Bloy
Declaring four spades, South won the club lead in dummy and ran the spade queen. West won and thoughtfully switched to the diamond queen, in case he needed to surround declarer’s jack-third. Declarer won with the diamond king, played the trump ace and discovered the bad news. He then had to look to the heart suit for a quick discard. He cashed the heart king and then finessed the heart jack. Alas for him, East won, and the defenders cashed two diamond tricks for two down.
The percentage play with this spade suit is actually to cash the ace and then lead toward dummy’s queen.This is basically equivalent to starting with the queen, save that the line chosen at the table will give you a second-round guess when West wins the king.
Today, however, declarer should not have been playing on trumps at all to begin with. On each of those two lines, declarer risks letting West in to shift to a diamond through dummy’s king, which could be fatal if the diamond ace is offside.
It is better to win the club ace, play the heart king at trick two, and then finesse the heart jack. If that wins, declarer can discard a diamond on the heart ace. If it loses, he falls back on hoping to find the diamond ace onside, in which case he can still get rid of one diamond on the heart ace in good time.
Thus, declarer combines his chances in the red suits, provided hearts split decently. He can later play the spade ace and another spade to pick that suit up.
ANSWER: Lead the diamond two. Broken fourcard holdings are unattractive to lead from. There will be at least one four-card major in dummy anyway. A diamond strikes the right balance between safety and productivity. The diamond intermediates are not quite good enough to lead the 10, which I would do if my diamond five were the eight or seven.