When you are on lead against an opposing game contract you will often be reluctant to lead away from your scattered honour cards, especially if declarer's hand has been shown to be much stronger than his partner's during the bidding.

Now consider the position on the following hand from declarer's point of view after he has shown a strong hand and been put into game by his partner. The scene is the swiss teams event at the Easter Festival 2005.

The hands are:

Partner has bid aggressively but the contract looks a good one — with two aces to lose declarer has to hope that either the trumps play for no loser (KJ or KJx onside) or that the hearts play for one loser (if RHO has the ace and we rise with the king on the first round, or the better percentage play of finessing RHO for the queen) — certainly you want to be in it at teams.

Supposing you were told that the AQ of hearts were sitting over your KJ10 and that the KJ of trumps were not both onside — now the decision to be in game doesn't look so good.

However the opening lead appears: the jack of spades!

It now doesn't take too much thought to win the Q in hand, cross to dummy and finesse the 9 on the way back. When trumps are 3-2 you can draw them and play on hearts for the overtrick — which has no chance of materialising as the cards lie of course.

It turned out that LHO's hand was:

Now it seems as though a spade is probably the second least passive lead you could make (after a heart) — a club lead is unlikely to cost a trick and a diamond lead certainly won't. I've heard about "never underlead an ace against a suit contract" but choosing the Jx of trumps over a J109 sequence does strike me as rather poor bridge — not that I was complaining on this deal!