Winning Suit Contract Leads

Like its companion volume on no trump leads, this is a superb book, an important addition to bridge literature and should be on the bookshelf of every serious player.

The follow-up book to ‘Winning Notrump Leads’, and just as interesting.

David Bird and Taf Anthias, who previously challenged traditional ideas about opening leads against notrump, have turned their attention to leading against suit contracts. Bird and Anthias focus on frequently- occurring families of auctions. They start with uncontested auctions to game or partscore, where the opponents have bid only one suit. Then, they move on to simple competitive auctions, before considering more complex auctions, where the opponents bid more than one suit, make a splinter or preemptive raise, or open one notrump; or where partner opens with one of a suit. They also analyze leads after simple auctions to reach small and grand slams. As well, different kinds of leads are assessed: singletons, doubletons and trump leads, to determine whether there are specific types of auctions where these are more likely to succeed or fail. Some of the conclusions endorse expert practice. For example, leading your singleton is shown to be best the vast majority of the time, as is leading a trump when you have declarer’s second suit under control. Other situaitons are controversial, especially preferring passive leads from weak holdings to leading away from an honor, and the success of leading from low doubletons. Aware that these will be surprising, the authors offer as an explanation the analogy of declarer’s practice of leading up to rather than away from honors. Slightly less controversially, the authors conclude that trump leads are rarely right except in a few obvious situations or when everything else is worse.

All serious players should read this and the authors’ previous volume and think about the conclusions they reach. Already a number of experts in Australia and elsewhere have changed their leading habits.