LECTURE II.
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THE LEAD.
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“Dux nobis opus est.”—Eton Grammar.
“I pray thee now lead.”—Shakespeare.
The play of the entire hand often depends upon the very first card led, and the confidence your partner has that your lead is correct; whatever then your original lead may be, let it be a true and—as far as you can make it so—a simple lead: never lead an equivocal card—that is one which may denote either strength or weakness—if you can, lead a card about which no mistake is possible.[6] With the original lead, follow the books and lead your strongest suit; if you have nothing at all, do as little mischief as you can; in this pitiable condition the head of a short suit—as a knave or a ten—is better than the lowest or lowest but one of five to the nine; your partner, when he sees the high card led, knows at once (assuming he knows anything) that he will have to save the game himself if it can be saved, and will take the necessary steps to that end. Though there is ancient and modern authority for this,[7] I am perfectly aware that (according to the latest theory) it is heresy; I am also aware, and the reflection gives me quite as much pain as the heresy does, that leading a long weak suit with a bad hand and no cards of re-entry is a losing game:
“Such courses are in vain
Unless we can get in again.”
to lead your longest suit when you are neither likely to get the lead again, nor to make a trick in it if you do, is a “short and easily remembered rule,” but is apt to bring its followers to grief; if I do so, I know perfectly well that after the game is over I shall probably be left with the two long cards of that suit, or I may have an opportunity of discarding one or both of them before that crisis arrives, but this is not the slightest consolation to me.