10 Make the most of your honours

Some advice in playing the hand, whether you are declarer or LHO. First, what is the best lead for LHO at trick one, and the worst? The best is top of a sequence (at least 3 touchers including an honour), (2nd best: singleton at trumps). The worst is to underlead an ace at trumps, and 2nd worst is to lead the ace. But I can sum it all up with good advice to everybody: avoid leading a suit containing a single honour or tenace (tenace is two gapped honours, i.e. AQ, KJ, Q10.) It doesn’t matter whether you lead an honour or a small card, it is best to wait for someone else to lead that suit. Things are not so dangerous with the lower honours, but aces and kings offer especial danger of giving the opponent a trick for nothing, and we cannot afford to give even a single trick! Aces were meant to kill kings, or another honour if not.  Kings should strive to take a trick, which means that you want to know where the ace is before you play it.

What all this avoidance means is that it is best to play safe, especially at that critical first lead, but really all the time. So forget the idea that every lead is supposed to produce a trick, just put out something harmless if you are not sure. Yes, top of nothing, often. It’s better than slapping your ace down and producing a sigh of relief from declarer’s king. By the way, a lead of A from AK is safe but not necessarily good - it’s often better to switch suits after playing the ace, and keep your king to put on somebody’s queen. And there’s always a trump lead.  This is normally good from literally 2 or 3 small trumps. Other trump holdings may jeopardise a natural trump trick.

A bad first lead often presents the declarer with his contract.