Bridge in Greenwich: Learning to interpret your partner’s lead
With few opportunities to play cards in person due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, bridge players can keep their game sharp by trying out the problem posed in our weekly quiz.
With few opportunities to play cards in person due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, bridge players can keep their game sharp by trying out the problem posed in 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-1C; Partner-1H; Opponent-1S; You-Pass; Opponent-2C; All Pass. Partner leads the DQ. Dummy has K74 and you have 9862. Partner could hold: a) QJ1053 b)Q c)QJ d)QJ3 e)Q105.
Answer: The queen would be the correct lead from four of the five holdings shown, the exception being e), with which partner would lead the 5 (low from three to an honor or two non-touching honors). The bidding, however, precludes partner having two of the remaining choices, namely a) and b). With a), partner, who has already shown a strong five-card or longer suit by overcalling with one heart, would surely have contested the opener’s two-club rebid by mentioning a suit such as this at his second turn to bid. Furthermore, if partner had such a hand, he might well have made an “unusual” two notrump bid at his first turn to indicate at least five cards in the two lowerranking suits, hearts and diamonds.
And if partner held b), it would mean crediting the declarer, who has opened and rebid clubs, with holding a concealed five-card diamond suit, headed no less by the AJ10. Since the declarer could have an unbid three- or four-card diamond suit, though, it is possible that partner could be leading from either c) or d).