Goren on Bridge

North-South vulnerable, South deals

Fourth-best leads were the order of the day for decades, especially against a no-trump contract. This worked well on most hands but created problems on others. Today’s deal, played some years ago by French expert Michel Lebel, is a case in point.

The opening diamond lead was ducked to East’s queen. East feared that South might hold the jack of diamonds, so he shifted to a low heart. South’s queen lost to the king and West reverted to diamonds. South ducked again in dummy. East won with the king and continued the suit to dummy’s ace. What would you discard from your hand on the third diamond? Lebel made the spectacular discard of the ace of hearts! He now led dummy’s 10 of hearts to East’s jack, but East was out of diamonds and Lebel had his nine tricks. Nice play!

To avoid this kind of defensive problem, many modern players will only lead fourth best, or a low card, when they hold an honor in the suit — at least the jack. They lead their second highest card in the suit if they don’t have an honor. Had East-West shared this agreement, East would have returned his king of diamonds at trick two and Lebel would have had his work cut out for him. He can still succeed, and we’ll leave that as an exercise for interested readers.

Bob Jones welcomes readers’ responses sent in care of this newspaper or to Tribune Content Agency, LLC., 16650 Westgrove Dr., Suite 175, Addison, TX 75001. Email responses may be sent to tcaeditors@tribune.com. © 2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.