40  A nice device for defenders - the Dead Dummy Dodge

Somewhere in my tips I warned LHO not to lead from single honours or tenaces if at all possible, because it could give a trick away. It is better to wait for someone else to lead the suit. For example if you hold AQxx and lead the suit (no matter which card) you will make the declarer smile if he holds the king. But what if your partner has the king? Or the dummy even. Another holding: KJxx.  Ideally you want both the ace and the queen on your right. Or in your partner’s hand. Again, if you only knew! Partner might have either or both the missing cards, and even if he did, he might be cautious for the same reason. So although you hold a sequence between you, nobody leads it because one of you is frightened, and the other is frit!

There’s a simple solution, and it lies totally in the hands of the RHO because he can see the dummy as 4th in hand if he leads the suit in question.  (If dummy holds a high card which might take the trick and he (RHO) has a higher card to beat it, perhaps find some other safe lead.) But if dummy has only low cards, we have a very powerful device at hand: that is the suit to lead, because dummy cannot take this trick and partner may hold a tenace, praying that you would lead it. So lead it.

But wait! Here’s the crunch - don’t lead a low card, this will make complications. Here’s Terry’s golden rule: lead your highest card, even an Ace. Well, there’s no king around to put it on. Don’t tell me that you would cheerfully lead an ace at trick one (when you can’t see what’s on your right) but you won’t lead one now.(when you can) Lead your TOP card whatever it is, and if it holds the trick, now lead your next highest, and so on till something happens.  Typically it goes something like J-Q-K-x or Q-A-x-x with partner gratefully eyeing his promoted king. You have probably seen something like this before but not sure how it works. How it works is that it doesn’t give a trick away and many and many a time it gets a contract down. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what cards you or the other two hold, it is winning play. The crux is that dummy is out of it, so at least you are leading through strength and up to weakness.

I call it the Dead Dummy Dodge or DDD though if you can think of a more elegant-sounding title I would be grateful. It’s well-known amongst good players but I don’t think anyone else has ever gone my whole hog in saying that you can safely lead your top card every time, no matter how the pictures are distributed. Even in the extreme case where the declarer holds all the honours except your lone king or queen, you are hardly giving a trick away by going against all normal rules to lead your honour, because the declarer could always pick it up by a finesse. [So the only time to take fright and abstain will be if dummy has no entries whatever. Pretty rare,]

This DDD rule is rather like Einstein’s Relativity: the difficulty is not understanding it, it’s believing it.

Use the DDD whenever you can, RHO.  (LHO, don’t even think about it.)