Accent

Bridge: Accentuating the positive

There are no magic rules to guide one to the best opening lead, and often the wrong choice will produce a disastrous result. Consider this deal, where South wound up in six clubs doubled. Perhaps East should have opened three spades, which might have shut the opponents out of the bidding. Instead, he started with one spade, allowing North-South to find their club fit. West's spade lead was very doubtful, as he should have realized that North's four-spade cuebid indicated a void in the suit and that a spade lead would therefore accomplish nothing. Whether West should have led a diamond or a heart is debatable - without seeing all four hands - but his actual lead proved fatal. Declarer ruffed the spade in dummy and led the queen of clubs, on which East followed low. South made a good guess by going up with the ace and leading five rounds of hearts, discarding all three of his diamonds in the process. West ruffed the fifth heart, but that was the only trick for the defense. As a result, declarer made the slam and scored 1,660 points, instead of going down one, which would have been his lot had West led a diamond originally. Had West realized that a spade lead was wrong, he might have led a heart - in which case declarer would still have made the contract. But then again, West might have led a diamond - in which case the slam would have failed. The bottom line is that since a spade lead did not figure to gain anything for his side, West should have dismissed it from consideration. In effect, West's spade lead misfired because he failed to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive.