Lead Positioning: Dummy on Your Right with Small Cards

There is a good general rule that will serve you well over the years if you follow it, when Dummy on your right holds small cards in a suit, its generally correct to play low when you have touching honours. 

Lets look at examples to make it quite clear. 

1. You are defending some contract, dummy, East, is on your right and declarer calls for a low card off dummy, what do you do?

Play small, don't split your honours.

2. This applies with other honour combinations, so for example, if you decide to switch to this suit, against most contracts, its probably a good idea to play low rather than to lead the Queen. 

Of course you have to use common sense and apply the particular context of the hand. For example, sometimes you need to stay on lead in order to defeat the contract, or hope your partner has a strong enough holding that you can lead out your top honours. But to clarify the rationale, this is a typical layout of a suit.

Declarer leads low from dummy, hoping to make one trick in the suit

They will probably try play low to the Jack, and later low to the King, making no tricks. If you split the 109, they may cover that the first time with the Jack, and then  they might play low to the 8 on the second round (instead of low to the King), and make a trick where they would not have before. Look carefully over that example to get a feel for it, or as a short cut follow the principle don't split honours when dummy on your right has only small cards.

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