Your partner has bid a suit.
Lead his suit UNLESS you have a very good reason not to do so.
Top card from a doubleton.
3rd highest from an honour.
Lowest of 3 or 4 small. An exception is made when you have shown 3-card support. In that case lead the highest.
Leads in a NT contract.
If you are leading from a position over the strong hand ( the opening 1NT bidder for example) BEWARE of leading from tenace holdings. The dangerous suits to lead from are those with:-
AQ10
KJxx
KQx
With these holdings sit back and wait for your tricks.
The better choice is to lead from a weak suit such as 4 cards to the 10.
This may be finessing partner….BUT he was in a finessable position anyway, so no great damage will be done.
With a good suit say KQJ10xx, then you should be making an attacking lead.
Here the King is the correct lead.
The same applies from any suit containing a sequence (or broken sequence) of 3 cards.
If the strength is split between the 2 hands, then lead from your longest suit UNLESS it is a suit bid by the opps.
Again the lead is the 4th highest card, UNLESS the suit is headed by a sequence of 3 cards (or broken sequence)
Examples of leads from the highest card are:-
KQJ
KQJx
QJ10x
QJ9x
But NOT from
KQxx
QJxx
Here you would lead your 4th highest.
A sequence is a 3-card unbroken sequence. Very often you will have a suit with a broken sequence. This should be also amongst your choice of opening lead.
Broken sequences comes in 2 varieties.
1. A holding in which there is a break after the first 2 cards before the sequence is continued.
AKJ10
KQ10x
QJ9X
Note; there may be more than 4 cards in the suit
Here the lead again is the top card in the suit
2. A holding where there is a break after the first card in the sequence.
KJ10x
Q109x
OR
missing 2 cards
AJ109
K1098
Q98x
You are hoping partner has one or more of the missing cards to help you establish the suit.
Leads against a suit contract
Similar in some respects to the above.
Lead partner’s suit. Leads will be the same
Again beware of leading from tenaces over the strong hand
Leads from suits with honours are however, now different.
Always lead the higher of 2 touching honours, and never the 4th highest as shown in the examples above.
Never lead from unsupported kings, and never underlead an ace. However, sometimes the lead points to the unbid major ( they have avoided NT). Then it is usually safe to lead the King.
From a holding of 3 small, I favour the lowest card.
From my experience this nearly always pays dividends, as declarer will place you with a missing honour card, or expect you to hold a 4-card suit.
Unless it can possibly be avoided do not lead from top of a doubleton.
If you can get into the habit of not doing this, then partner should be able to recognise that the lead is from a singleton, and will give you an immediate ruff.
Therefore with a singleton, lead it.
If you have a good trump holding do NOT lead a short suit. You do not want to ruff and shorten your trumps. You want to be able to force declarer, so lead your longest suit.
In the absence of anything better, it is often best to lead a trump.
However never lead from a holding of Jx or Qx. Very often partner will have Qxx, or Jxx opposite your lead and so giving declarer a present of no losers.
Never lead a singleton trump.
