Opening Lead: Versus Notrumps

The opening lead is the pivotal card in many defences. It’s a unique card too, the only card played without a sight of dummy. Because there’s no dummy to help you, you have to fall back on tried-and-tested winning formulae and versus notrumps, that’s generally leading the “fourth from the top of the longest and strongest suit”. The reason for leading your longest suit v notrumps is to exhaust the opponents of their cards of the suit, so you can win tricks with your small left-over cards.

So after an unrevealing 2NT-3NT auction by the opponents, lead ♥4 from:

it wouldn’t be a big deal to lead  ♥2 rather than ♥4, but an aspiring partner would think “ah, if ♥2 is my partner’s fourth highest, he has only four hearts”. So stick with ♥4.

Change your hand to:

and now it would be a mistake to lead ♥4. This risks declarer winning cheaply with say ♥10. When your long suit is headed by three touching* honours, lead the top of the sequence. So lead ♥K. That way you’ll force out ♥A.

*Or near-touching: lead ♥K from ♥KQ1042.