The Best Leads Against 3NT by David Bird and Taf Anthias
Source: 5th EUROPEAN OPEN BRIDGE CHAMPIONSHIPS Bulletins
The authors were a formidable partnership in the seventies before Taf Anthias went to work in the USA (he was a vice President of Cisco Systems). They are working on a project to evaluate opening leads. Taf is an expert programmer and they are using some programs that he has written to automate the process. Their conclusions against no trump contracts will be published in a Master Point Press book towards the end of the year. Recent advances in bridge software allow the best opening leads to be investigated. For a given West hand, several thousand deals can be generated that match the chosen auction.
These deals are then played at double-dummy, against the 13 possible opening leads, to see which lead works best. Our investigations suggest that the double-dummy advantages to both declarer and the defenders tend to cancel each other out, giving a sound basis for evaluating the leads. The auction 1NT – 3NT, which you should assume throughout this article, gives you valuable information about the responder’s hand. He does not hold a 5-card major or he would have made a transfer bid on the way to 3NT. He is also unlikely to hold a 4-card major, since he did not use Stayman.
What about the opener’s hand? [ilink url=”http://csbnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Páginas-11-y-12-bul_13.pdf”] Click here[/ilink] to continue Reading.