This week’s focus: How to read opening leads
With few opportunities to play cards in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bridge players can keep their game sharp by trying out our weekly quiz.
Today’s quiz: Here is another in the current series of quizzes on interpreting your partner’s opening leads. In the following problem, you are given the bidding, your partner’s lead, and your own and the dummy’s holding in the suit led, accompanied by five card combinations your partner might hold. Taking all available information into account, which of the five combinations do you think your partner might actually be leading from? (More than one of the choices could be correct.)
The bidding: Opponent-1H; Partner-Pass; Opponent-1S; You-Pass; Opponent-1NT; PartnerPass; Opponent-3H; YouPass; Opponent-4H; All Pass. Partner leads the D6. Dummy has J83 and you have A107542. Partner could hold: a)Q96 b)K96 c)96 d)Q6 e) 6.
Answer: The key to partner’s holding lies in the declarer’s one notrump rebid on the second round, which promised a balanced distribution (no singleton or void, and not more than one doubleton) in a hand of 12 to 14 points.
Since you can see a total of nine diamonds in dummy and your own hand, and since declarer cannot hold less than two diamonds for his one notrump rebid, it is not possible for partner to have more than two diamonds, effectively eliminating both a) and b) from consideration.
This leaves only a doubleton or a singleton as potential holdings for partner, but since partner would always lead the top card from a doubleton, and since all the spot cards below the six are visible in the dummy and your own hand, he cannot have a doubleton either (with the two doubletons in c) and d), partner would have led the nine and queen, respectively).
Consequently, if declarer’s bidding is to be trusted, the only holding partner can have is the one given in e), the singleton six.