[Lesh18]

Hi. When playing defence, I know the basic rules, 'second low', 'third high' or 'always cover an honour with an honour' or 'play the lowest of equals' (when not leading). Are there any more?

And I know the opening leads rules for both no-trump and trump contract.

However, I was struggling with leads (not the first lead, the opening one, but any lead when a defender gets to lead). Can I use the same rules for any leads as for opening leads? (I guess when leading with equals I am supposed to play the highest one?

Thanks

[qwery_hi]

This is what I picked up, not sure how much of this is considered "best" by experts -

The most important thing is attitude leads in the middle of the hand , i.e. if partner wins the trick, should he lead the suit back? This depends on the card you lead.

If it is a small card, you're telling partner that he should lead back the suit. If its a high spot card, you;re telling partner don't lead back that suit.

Since I just use standard leads, I would lead top of touching honours, and top of an interior sequence. so kJtxx J is lead.

If you're going to cash AK, although you would lead A from that holding, to inform partner that you have the ace, I've seen people cash the king, give partner a ruff, so partner can reach them with the ace.

[barmar]

Maybe this is the same thing qwery_hi was trying to say in his last paragraph, but I'm having trouble parsing it so I'll say it anyway.

Regardless of your agreement for which card to lead as an opening lead with AKx, in the middle of the hand you generally lead King.

[Zelandakh]

Lesh18, on 2013-October-01, 19:11, said:

Are there any more?

The classic sayings are (on opening lead) "fourth highest from longest and strongest" and (during the hand) "lead through strength and up to weakness". Other sayings you hear are often are to lead a trump against a grand slam or when the opponents have splintered. As with almost all bridge sayings, many of these are more dangerous than helpful. The "cover an honour with an honour" one is probably responsible for more defensive mistakes than any other. More often than not, it is correct not to cover an honour.

In any case, if you hold an honour over dummy, one of the things you should try and do is visualise at trick one under which conditions you want to cover and when not. Similarly for the other sayings you gave, "second hand low except..." would be more appropriate. It is important to learn a few classical positions for playing second hand high. As you improve, you can then add falsecarding to the repertoire - there is a thread on the subject here. The same applies to "third hand high" - this is probably the second most dangerous defensive saying. There are many occasions where it is right for third hand to duck, most commonly because you want to use your high card to capture one of dummy's high cards or in order to give declarer a guess.

Basically, while it is nice to have a default action sometimes, what is important is to understand why that is and therefore to know when such a rule does and does not apply. But most of all, you need to think about the actual hand and make concrete decisions based on that. If you look in almost any club, the players who work from bridge rules are almost always in the bottom half. To become good you have to work beyond such rules and start thinking.

[Endymion77]

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-08, 09:20, said:

Other sayings you hear are often are to lead a trump against a grand slam or when the opponents have splintered.

Also, and this one's quite effective, is to lead a trump when one of the opponents has shown a distributional hand and the other one has taken preference (especially if you have a strong holding in declarer's second suit)

[barmar]

Rules of thumb about opening leads could fill a book. In fact, there are quite a few. I suggest readers get themselves a copy of Mike Lawrence's book on opening leads. Trying to cover them here seems kind of silly.

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-08, 09:20, said:

To become good you have to work beyond such rules and start thinking.

Curly Joe Howard said:

I'm tryin' ta think, but nothin's happ'nin'!

[cherdano]

Lesh18, on 2013-October-01, 19:11, said:

However, I was struggling with leads (not the first lead, the opening one, but any lead when a defender gets to lead). Can I use the same rules for any leads as for opening leads? (I guess when leading with equals I am supposed to play the highest one?

As others have said, I would recommend just playing them as attitude style - play high if you have nothing in that suit and/or want partner to switch, play low if you have an honour in that suit and/or want partner to return the suit.

Always thinks of suit preference implications: if partner already knows your holding in the suit, you can lead a higher card to indicate a preference to tell partner you like the higher remaining suit. Etc.

As for general rules on defence: I think you know the basic rules, now the important thing is to always try to picture declarer's hand, and in particular to figure out his shape. Once you can guess his shape, you typically know whether you need to be aggressive (e.g. build up tricks before declarer gets rid of his losers on a side suit) or passive (trying to avoid breaking suits e.g. in case declarer has to guess a queen double finesse).

[hautbois]

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-08, 09:20, said:

Other sayings you hear are often are to lead a trump against a grand slam or when the opponents have splintered.

If the splinter is a mini-Roman 2♦, double and lead trumps.

8-ever, 9-never (sometimes you know where the queen is).

To be a little more helpful to OP, what do you lead the second time around in the suit? Say partner leads small to your honor-empty. Whether you win the 1st trick or are returning this suit later, a high return implies you started with 3 and a low return implies you started with 4 or more.