Challenging Dogmas

These ‘rules’ include such axioms as never pre-empt without honours in the pre-emptive suit, never lead a trump, never lead an unsupported honour, always lead fourth best against notrumps, and so on. There is no doubt that many of these rules have a lot of merit and have been developed as the percentage approach based on years of experience and I am not suggesting that the rules developed from years of experience should be ignored. It is good to have rules and agreements to guide our bidding, defence and card-play, as these agreements help to get us to the best contracts (mostly) and to make the correct defence or give a meaningful signal. But these rules need to be tempered with judgement based on the evidence available at the table, rather than blindly followed without consideration of logical alternatives.

The ‘rule’ which came to mind for this article is ‘I always lead an Ace if I have one’ when defending against a slam. This rule was followed by almost every table on this next board where I became declarer in 6H. I also wanted to write up this hand because how often does one get dealt a 10-card suit? It was certainly my first, and consequently our systems don’t necessarily lend themselves to effectively bidding the ‘one-in-15-year’ hands.

Dealer: NORTH  / Vulnerable: ALL