The bidding leads to the open lead

Peter Drucker, an Austrian-American writer on the subjects of management theory and practice, penned, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

In bridge, you try to manage the auction to reach the best contract. But sometimes it is important to help partner with the opening lead.

In today's deal, what is the par contract, the one in which each side does worse by bidding higher? The deal was played 17 times at Bridge Base Online. The best East-West result was five spades doubled and made by West. The auction followed as shown, except that East bid five spades, not five hearts, and for some reason South doubled. After a diamond lead, West ruffed in the dummy, crossed to hand with a trump, ruffed another diamond, drew trumps and tried to run hearts. They did not split evenly, but West had 11 tricks: six spades, three hearts and those two diamond ruffs. Only one other table went beyond four spades. That auction is given. Over three diamonds, East wanted to make a four-heart fit-showing jump, but wasn't confident that partner would read it as such. So he settled for four spades. Then South might have rebid five clubs to help partner judge, should East-West bid higher. When he rebid five diamonds, East took the opportunity to tell his partner what to lead should North-South go to six diamonds, which is exactly what happened. The defenders took the first two tricks for down one. The par result is six diamonds doubled, down one.