Sitting South, you open your balanced 15-count with 1NT:
West leads the 4 of Spades...
Contract: 6 No-trump
Lead: ♠4. East wins with the Ace and plays back the 7 of Hearts.
Holding 17HCP and a five-card Diamond suit, your partner counted an additional point for length and jumped directly to 6NT (18+15=33).
What is the classic way to lead against 6 or 7 No-trump?
Against a slam that was bid "by weight", the best is to lead from the longest suit without an honor, giving standard count (third and fifth) because one must strive not to waste the few useful values that the defense may possess.
How many tricks do you need?
You start with ten tricks: the Diamond Ace, four Hearts, three Clubs and two Spades and the only suit that could provide you with the two missing tricks is Diamonds:
♦A10952
♦Q643
What is the problem that you are facing?
You are missing KJ87 in Diamonds and it will be very difficult not to lose any trick.
Is there a distribution of the missing Diamonds that would be helpful for your project?
Yes. There are even two:
-
- The stiff Jack at your right. If that's the case, you have to let the Queen run in order to “crush” it:
♦A10952
♦K87
♦Q643
♦J
-
- The stiff King to your left. Here, you'd have to play the 3 and then cover the King with the Ace. Next, you can then let the 10 run for a “forcing” finesse against Jack- third in East's hand:
♦A10952
♦K
♦Q643
♦J87
How can you make a judicious choice between the two ways of tackling the suit?
Since it is obviously not a question of flipping a coin, you have to carefully count the distributions of the hidden hands.
How will you proceed?
To simplify your task, you’ll only reconstruct the distribution of a single defender, the one already better known to you. Here this is West, who had to decide on the opening lead. First, you'll cash the three suits without a problem, that is Spades, Clubs and Hearts, and carefully watch the discards, so in
the end you'll know his number of Diamonds.
There you go...
East discards a Club on the third round of Spades and you have the confirmation that West started with five. West throws a Spade on the third round of Clubs and the fourth round of Hearts. He therefore originally held two Clubs and three Hearts, which makes it now possible
to deduce that he had a 5-3-3-2 and therefore three Diamonds.
With this in mind, what will you do?
You put the Diamond Queen on the table and when West covers with the King and East follows with the Jack, a huge sigh of relief escapes your chest ‒ you now have twelve tricks.
Where you right to play Clubs (the King, then Ace-Queen) before the last Heart from dummy?
Yes, of course. This allowed you to be in your hand and to play the Diamond Queen, protecting against King-third.
Last question: if you had discovered that West had five Spades, four Hearts and three Clubs, what would be your reaction?
You would have played a small Diamond, hoping for his singleton to be the King
(♠87654 ♥6543 ♦K ♣962)
THE PRINCIPLE
At bridge, correctly playing suit combinations is the cornerstone of declarer play because it allows you to optimize all the crucial plays that you have to execute. Faced with a choice between several possible ways of tackling a suit, as you were on the occasion of this deal, sometimes it’s counting the suit distribution, sometimes it's counting the points that will put you on the right track.
Many thanks
Hello, here are my answers.
In France : - the 4th Best is promising. But as, against 6 and 7 Sans-Atout requested by weight, we select our longest suit without honor to preserve our values, we exceptionally favor the odd-even which is more precise, - we open with 1SA regular hands located in the 15-17 zone, - For the 5-card Spades in West, it is East's discard at the third turn of the suit which was revealing.
Remaining at your disposal, I send you my warmest greetings, Norbert Lébely
PS. : sorry for my bad english
You are right: why complicate standard carding and not use 4th best? It is the French style to prefer complex solutions to simple yet effective ones. Some day perhaps they will realize that energy should be spent wisely, and much less in memorizing conventions and agreements than in exercising judgement where required. This being said, Lebely's playing explanations are still great as usual, and applicable in standard carding to the lead of the 5 of spades.
Of course the author in his usual highly pedagogical way addresses the big audience, the one not aware that having 15HCPs and a balanced hand are insufficient criteria for South to open 1N. In winning bridge, this hand should be opened in classical 5 card major systems 1D, not 1N, therefore not landing in 6N which here finds a lucky happy end 🙂
How do you know that West has 5 clubs.?
How do you know that Weat has 5 clubs.?
It surprised me that the author considered 3rd and 5th a standard lead vs. NT. Not that it isn't playable, but 3rd best could easily be a valuable spot.