What is the best play?

[Rebel]

Hi, I have just found this forum and have been reading some
of the different posts. I have a question for you guys. The dealer flips up a King of clubs.
Everyone passes and the dealer picks it up and goes alone.

I sit in first and have the

Which card would be the best lead?

[Wes (aka the legend)]

Hi, I have just found this forum and have been reading some
of the different posts. I have a question for you guys. The dealer flips up a King of clubs.
Everyone passes and the dealer picks it up and goes alone.

I sit in first and have the

Which card would be the best lead?

1) Never lead a single ace vs a loner (the exception being against a 3rd seat loner, where you're the 2 seat and you're supposed to lead next, lead the next ace even if it's your only one)

The reason you generally don't wanna lead a single ace is because if your partner has two aces, leading your ace will force him to guess on 4th street and potentially throw a good ace away. This can never happen if you just lead another suit. Then the dealer has to get through all 3 aces, which is tough to do. Remember if your ace is good, it will be good no matter when you play it.

2) Obviously don't lead trump here.

3) Now we're down to leading a spade or a diamond. Which one should we go with? The answer is you want to lead the suit that your partner is mostly likely to trump. That means lead spades. The idea is a lot of loners will tend to have offsuit aces in them. You're hoping to catch the dealer with the , and your partner trumps in to save the day.

[irishwolf]

Good answer on the first lead.
Now the question is, suppose the dealer won the trick, doesn't matter how.The dealer now leads the JC eldest follows suit and comes back with JS to the 3rd trick. What should eldest play to his JS, 3rd trick?

[RedDuke]

Not sure if it's the best play, but I pretty much always lead next against the dealer's lone. The reason being exactly what Wes said. Because the next suit only has five cards and there are 9 cards out of play on a lone attempt, next is the most likely suit that somebody will be void in and it could easily be your partner.

Now the question is, suppose the dealer won the trick, doesn't matter how.The dealer now leads the JC eldest follows suit and comes back with JS to the 3rd trick. What should eldest play to his JS, 3rd trick?

Assuming that the first lead was spades then throw that away. We already know that the dealer is void in spades.

There's also no chance that the 9 of diamonds will take a trick, so you might as well throw it away on the fourth trick. Save the ace-hearts until the end. The hope is that your partner will see you throwing off a diamond and if he has the diamond ace then he'll save that one. Since you haven't stopped the lone with a spades lead, hopefully whatever the fifth card is will be a diamond or heart and either yours or your partner's aces will stop it.

[irishwolf]

WRONG - 10s is not the card to play to the 3rd trick! Spades is already a dead suit! You have to play the game as a Partnership.

Irishwolf

Assuming that the first lead was spades then throw that away. We already know that the dealer is void in spades.

There's also no chance that the 9 of diamonds will take a trick, so you might as well throw it away on the fourth trick. Save the ace-hearts until the end. The hope is that your partner will see you throwing off a diamond and if he has the diamond ace then he'll save that one

[Rebel]

First off, thanks for your responses. I hadn’t thought about it from my partners perspective, but it makes perfect sense not to put him in a bind. Taking this a step further, if I had two aces say the ace of hearts and the ace of diamonds would it be proper to lead one of them? Would having the ace of spades instead of the ace of diamonds change things?

[irishwolf]

Of course - lead one of two aces. Then slough spades.

Back to the 9D - this is partnership game. On a loner (giving away tips) you slough at first opportunity what you are NOT saving. (there are other ploys of stopping the loner) If you save the 9d until trick 4 he might think you have another diamond. Then he tosses his Diamond and you both end up saving hearts. Believe it happens !

IrishWolf

[Wes (aka the legend)]

Not sure if it's the best play, but I pretty much always lead next against the dealer's lone. The reason being exactly what Wes said. Because the next suit only has five cards and there are 9 cards out of play on a lone attempt, next is the most likely suit that somebody will be void in and it could easily be your partner.

You went too far with this strategy tho. Next is not always "the most likely suit that somebody will be void in".

Assume we're against a club loner like before. Let's say we had



Now we should lead hearts.