Opening leads

Why the opening lead is hard

Every other card you play is chosen with dummy visible and some of the play behind you. The opening lead has neither.

What you do have is the auction. A partnership that bid to 4♠ quickly has different holdings from one that crawled there, and an opponent who bid notrump has told you something about their stoppers. Reading the auction is a large part of choosing a lead; the sections below cover the standard choices and which card to play.

Against notrump: length

In notrump, both sides are trying to set up a long suit, and the side that gets there first with an entry left usually wins.

So you lead your longest and strongest suit, and you lead the fourth-highest card of it. Fourth-highest tells partner about length and lets them apply the rule of 11.

• ♠ K J 8 6 3: lead the 6.
• ♥ Q 10 7 4 2: lead the 4.
• With a sequence, lead the top of it instead: ♦ Q J 10 6: lead the queen.

Don't lead a suit the opponents bid naturally, and don't lead away from a lone ace. Both give away a trick more often than they gain one.

The rule of 11

When partner leads fourth-highest, subtract the card's rank from 11. The answer is how many higher cards are held by the other three hands: dummy, declarer and you.

Partner leads the ♥ 6. Eleven minus six is five, so five cards above the six are outstanding. Count the ones you can see in dummy and in your own hand, and whatever is left must be with declarer.

The sum takes a few seconds, and it tells you how many cards above partner's lead declarer holds in the suit.

Against a suit contract: safety and ruffs

Length matters much less here, because declarer will ruff your long suit. What matters is taking your tricks before they disappear, and not giving one away on the first card.

• Partner's suit if they bid one. It's usually right, and it's what they asked for.
• The top of a sequence. ♣ K Q J or ♥ Q J 10 is the safest lead there is: it rarely costs a trick, and it starts setting one up.
• A singleton, hoping to ruff, but only if you have a trump entry or partner has bid. A singleton lead with no entries just helps declarer.
• A trump, when the auction suggests declarer plans to ruff in dummy. Cutting the ruffs down is often worth more than any active lead.

Which card, once you have picked the suit

The card you lead tells partner something about the suit. The standard choices:

• From a sequence: the top. K Q J → king. Q J 10 → queen. J 10 9 → jack.
• From a broken sequence: still the top. K Q 10 → king.
• From length with no sequence: fourth-highest.
• From three small: top, or the middle card, by agreement.
• From a doubleton: the higher, then the lower. Partner reads the echo as a doubleton.
• From A K: the ace or the king, by agreement. Settle which, because the holding comes up often.

Partner is reading these, so consistency matters more than which version you pick. See defensive signals for what they do with the information.

Listening to the auction

• They bid two suits and stopped low: they're stretched. An aggressive lead is less likely to be needed.
• They bid to a slam quickly: go passive. Lead something safe and wait; an aggressive lead is more likely to give declarer a trick.
• They used Stayman and played notrump : responder has a four-card major and opener doesn't have four of it.
• They splintered : you've been told exactly where the shortage is. Don't lead it.