LEARNING CENTER

10. In this auction, your left hand opponent (soon to be dummy) has shown hearts and diamonds and the declarer has clubs. Leading the unbid suit would be automatic, except we have a singleton and people love leading singletons. The problem with leading your singleton is that you do not want a ruff--you have two natural trump tricks, and if you ruff, you would still only get two club tricks (assuming declarer has something like AKxxxx). Leading hearts is very dangerous as you might be setting up tricks in the dummy for an eventual discard. 

4. Against opponents that jump to a suit slam, you want to try to find your tricks quickly. Here, the A doesn't seem like it will help--the dummy will have six spades and declarer might have none. With that in mind, I'd hope to find partner with the Q. Sometimes, you might even find AQ in dummy and scare declarer from taking the (winning) finesse. 

A. Paying attention to auctions can allow you to find unusual-seeming leads. When the opponents bid and raise clubs (even though 2 didn't promise more than 3) we know they likely have at least 7 clubs combined. I intend to give my partner a club ruff at trick two. 

A. You have to consider what, exactly, is happening on this type of auction. Declarer will have at least 7 tricks and the dummy has some assorted values in the other suits. That means that they might take the first 9 tricks. You need to see the dummy to know what suit to play, but if you lead a spade or a diamond it might be too late. Dummy could look like this: A1062 Q72 AQ65 76 or this: 109876 KQJ AQ63 8, but without looking at dummy, you won't know where to start.

6. You have 15 points and the opponents have about 25, how many can partner have? When you know partner has nothing, you are in charge of the defense by yourself. That means that you want to make as many passive exits as you can and force declarer to work for his tricks. 

3. You need to let partner know about your count, more importantly than showing that you have a bad holding. If you lead the 9, partner is going to think you either have a singleton or a doubleton. Leading low here should not promise an honor. 

9. On question 6, you never had a chance to show support. This time, you've shown three-card support for partner. That means that you can lead your highest to show that your hearts are bad.