The key to this hand is the opening lead, and I blew it. I faced the reverse situation on the previous day, and I came a cropper then, too. I need to spend some time to get my thinking straight on these AK situations.
Board #3
South dealer
East-West vulnerable
| | North
♠ A K 7 5
♥ J 10 8 6 3
♦ Q 3
♣ J 3
| | West
♠ J 6 3 2
♥ ——
♦ A 10 7 5
♣ A Q 8 7 5
| | East
♠ 10 8 4
♥ A K Q 9 7 5 4
♦ ——
♣ K 10 9
| | | South
♠ Q 9
♥ 2
♦ K J 9 8 6 4 2
♣ 6 4 2
| |
|
| | | | |
| South | West | North | East |
| 3♦ | P | P | 3♥ |
| P | 3NT | P | P |
| P | | | |
I was sitting North. The favorable vulnerability induced my partner to preempt with his rather ragged assortment. After two passes East entered his magnificent heart suit into the auction. Note that even in the balancing seat this is a very strong bid. East's hand, with five losers, qualifies, but not by much. West took a chance on 3NT.
I was on lead. It seemed clear that I should lead a spade or a diamond. Surely East must have at least one diamond stopper. If I led low, I would run the risk of blocking the suit if my partner, as I suspected, had no outside entries. If I led the queen, declarer would duck, and that would be that.
So I decided that it would be better to lead a spade. I confess that I gave insufficient thought to which card to lead. I planned to switch to a diamond at trick two, and I merely wanted partner to know how to get back to me. So, I set done the ♠A. To my surprise my partner played the ♠Q.
I had a flashback to the game on Tuesday morning. My partner had led the ace of a side suit against a suit contract. I had Qx. The dummy also had a doubleton, but my trump spots were better than the dummy's. I wanted my partner to continue with the queen, but she reasoned that I must either hold a singleton or a QJ doubleton. She led a low card, which declarer won with the jack that should have been worthless.
I apologized afterward to my partner and told her that her reasoning was sound. This popped into my rapidly aging brain when I saw that ♠Q on Wednesday evening. So, I reasoned that my partner probably had a doubleton QJ and continued with a low spade. As you can see, he didn't, and declarer thereafter had no trouble finding eleven tricks.
I looked it up in Kantar's Modern Bridge Defense. If I was intent on leading a spade against this 3NT contract, I definitely should have led fourth-best. On the other hand, because it was against a suit contract, my partner's lead on Tuesday was perfectly fine.
In retrospect, however, I don't think that I should have led a spade at all. I knew with almost complete certainty that the dummy was unlikely to provide more than three heart tricks. My partner probably had seven diamonds. We do not like to lie about the number of cards in a preempt. I therefore doubted that declarer could take a lot of tricks immediately. In fact, if I had just set my ♦Q on the table, declarer would have little choice but to take his nine tricks and then concede the last four tricks to us. If we take our three spade tricks first, he will have ten top tricks at that point.
Here is what Kantar says about leading aces against notrump contracts: “The lead of the ace, the most powerful of all notrump leads, announces possession of four honor cards and asks third hand to unblock the missing honor if she holds it It's a command!. In other words, when partner leads an ace and you have the K72, Q74 or J742 unload your honor. It only hurts for a little while. With AQJ10, you must have a certain outside entry to lead the ace. It is more common to lead the queen from this holding.”
I think that my confusion arose from the leads section of the convention card. The bolded lead from A K J x is the king. I remember someone telling me once that the way to remember this was “when you see the king, drop the queen.” I don't remember who said it. Maybe it was Mrs. Nolan, my third grade teacher, and maybe she was talking about the game of spades, not bridge.