[daveharty]

I was recently re-reading one of my favorite bridge books, Dormer on Deduction by Albert Dormer. I came across this hand, which was one of my favorites.

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West leads the ♥8.

This awkward lead has prevented you from testing spades before falling back on the diamond finesse. So what's your plan? Take the hook, or hope for 3-3 spades?

Spoiler

Dormer makes the point that West would likely never lead a black suit on the auction, so it was a choice between hearts and diamonds; and he would probably never lead away from the ♦K against 7NT. Dormer continues: "South may therefore reason as follows: 'West may have led a heart because he holds the ♦K and had no choice, or he may have led it because, lacking the ♦K, he did have a free choice and happened to lead a heart.'" He therefore recommends eschewing the finesse's "better" odds and playing for the 3-3 spade break.

This was the first time I had considered that restricted choice could be applied to situations like the opening lead.

[wank]

it's all a bit tenuous, especially the part about not leading a black suit - give west anything resembling a sequence or 4ish+ small cards and he's perfectly likely to lead that.

still i never claim to understand bridge maths so i'm probably under-estimating the impact such small factors have on the aggregate %ages.

[WellSpyder]

daveharty, on 2012-April-18, 17:48, said:

I was recently re-reading one of my favorite bridge books, Dormer on Deduction by Albert Dormer.

One of my favourites, too - I used to re-read bits of it before every big match to get me in the mood, until the hands became too familiar. It's been a while now, so maybe I'll start again, though I do still remember his point on this hand (which I think is an excellent one for making you think about the options an opponent has been faced with).