[pclayton]

Scoring: IMP

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RHO opens 1♥, you pass, 1N forcing by LHO, pard bids 2♦

RHO reverses with 2♠, you raise to 3♦, 3♥ on left, 4♥ on right.

Your lead?

[Apollo81]

I'll vote for the uninspired 3rd best diamond.

[skjaeran]

Just to make sure all possible leads are covered, I'll go for a trump.

As Justin said, anything might be right (except a ♠). I'll try to avoid ruffs in dummy and hope to score late ♠ trick(s). 2nd choice: ♦

[mikeh]

nice problem.

♠ lead is silly. It is the only lead for which it is nearly impossible to find a winning layout.

♦ lead gets us our ♦ trick, if we have one, and may allow partner to lead a trump from his side.. possibly allowing us to lead a second round before declarer can ruff ♠s. But our trump length suggests that the tapping defence is unlikely to prevail... and that we may be losing a tempo.

A ♣ lead can win: it is easy to see how this can score us a ruff if the suit is 5=3=3=2, with dummy holding 5. We may even get a second trump trick by force if the suit is 6322 and partner has a minor trump honour. But he needs the correct ♣ holding and even then, he has to guess accurately if he has the A but no quick side entry: he will have to know to duck the first round. And we may find a layout of KJ9xx in dummy and Axx in declarer, or equivalent.

Or we may find that declarer can cash 3 top ♣s, pitching his ♦ loser when we ruff with what would have been our second natural trump trick: partner being dealt Q10 or J10 of trump.

And, finally, we may lose a tempo.

A trump has obvious disadvantages if we were dealt 2 trump tricks or if, by leading a trump, we allow declarer to cash a second round and then run ♣s pitching his ♦ loser. But it may limit declarer's ability to ruff sufficient ♠s in dummy.

So, a good problem.

Put me down for a mundane ♦, since I think the chances of losing that trick or setting up the ♣ suit are too high for any other lead, and I expect partner to switch to trump when it is right to do so.

[bid_em_up]

Trump.

Why? Because I have 4 spades. I do not think it is likely we ever have 2 trump tricks on this auction.

Of course, I am probably going to wish that I led a diamond, so that partner could win and return his trump through declarer instead. Oh well.

[mike777]

Apollo81, on Mar 29 2007, 02:28 PM, said:

I'll vote for the uninspired 3rd best diamond.

ditto

[jdonn]

I am not smart enough to do anything but a diamond, maybe dummy has 3 spades anyway and then trump just gives up too much. I would not be surprised to see a trump or even a club work.

[pclayton]

Here's the entire hand:

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I led a trump, since it seemed dummy had a very weak hand with a little shape.

Seemingly a club sinks it, but by getting our ruff, we give declarer 2 spade pitches.

Push board right? No - teammates got a diamond lead and made the uninpsired play of the ♥10 from the board

[Apollo81]

pclayton, on Mar 29 2007, 07:40 PM, said:

Push board right? No - teammates got a diamond lead and made the uninpsired play of the ♥10 from the board

go team!

[dake50]

Lead a D as partner obviously made a lead director. Any shape with a D suit would have done some real interfering bid (I say facetiously).

[pclayton]

dake50, on Mar 30 2007, 09:46 AM, said:

Lead a D as partner obviously made a lead director. Any shape with a D suit would have done some real interfering bid (I say facetiously).

If my partner made lead directing overcalls vulnerable at the 2 level in a key match, we'd have bigger issues.