You are South holding this hand:
Opponents are silent. Partner opens one club in 4th seat. You respond one heart. Partner’s rebid is one spade. Your rebid bid is 1NT. Partner raises you to 3NT, making you declarer in 3NT. Opening lead is the jack of clubs. This is what you see when dummy comes down. How should you play?
Dummy:
Declarer (you):
You count your sure tricks: one spade, one heart, and three clubs for a total of five. Where are the other four likely to come from? If clubs break no worse than 4-2, you can develop one more trick in clubs. You will get one more trick in diamonds once the ace is dislodged. If the spade king is onside, you can develop at least two more tricks in spades. That’s probably the best you can hope for, since you are at risk in the diamond suit and there is too much to do in hearts.
You win the first trick with the ace of clubs and cash the king of clubs. You are happy to see right hand opponent follow suit with the deuce and nine. Clubs are breaking 4-2 as you had hoped. Now you cash the queen of clubs and throw left hand opponent in with dummy’s five of clubs.
Worst thing that can happen now is that left hand opponent shifts to a diamond. Say she does so and right hand opponent wins the ace and continues with the eight. You win the king, and now it’s time to test the spades.
Lead the 10 of spades to make sure you are still in hand for another finesse if left hand opponent ducks. If the finesse wins, you are going to get your nine tricks.
Pointers:
- A long suit can often be developed for an extra trick as was the case in this hand (clubs).
- Be careful of your entries to the long suit. In this case you need to make sure you lead the 10 of spades, so that you can repeat the finesse when it wins.
- When opening lead is the jack it promises top a sequence of at least jack, ten, eight of the led suit. Also, it denies the queen, since queen would be led if part of the sequence. Sometimes there is a higher honor in suit led (ace or king in this case). But, since you hold the top three honors, you know opening leader has none higher that the jack. I recommend you study standard leads and their logic.Here in bold are recommended opening leads from various suit holdings against notrump as they displayed on the convention card:
Questions?