Opening leads

Why it is the hardest card of the hand

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 where their strength is not.

Reading the auction is most of the skill. The card tables below are the rest.

Against notrump: length

Notrump contracts are races. Both sides are trying to establish a long suit, and whoever gets there first with an entry left 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.

Do not lead a suit the opponents bid naturally, and do not 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.

It is the cheapest piece of arithmetic in bridge and it frequently tells you declarer holds nothing worth worrying about, or that they hold exactly one card you must play around.

Against a suit contract: safety and ruffs

Length matters much less here — 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. Usually right, and it is what they asked for.
• The top of a sequence. ♣ K Q J or ♥ Q J 10 is the safest lead in bridge: it cannot cost, and it starts establishing a trick.
• 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 choose is a message. These are the standard ones:

• 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; it is the most common lead there is.

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 are stretched. An aggressive lead is less likely to be needed.
• They bid to a slam quickly — passive. Lead something safe and wait; an aggressive lead only helps.
• They used Stayman and played notrump — somebody has a four-card major and it was not a fit.
• They splintered — you have been told exactly where the shortage is. Do not lead it.