[Hawkster1]

I have noticed many declarers on this site deliberately play a sequence of cards in the closed hand from the bottom up. For example, with declarer holding AKQJx, the declarer seems frequently to lead from the closed hand by playing J; or, if the suite is led from declarer's right-hand opponent, declarer also plays J. This is just one example of many possible cases.

I seldom see any benefit for declarer to play this way since in most cases, it simply announces to the opponents the likely quality of declarer's holding in the suite.

(Now, I do see a benefit for playing the Q in some instances like this -- potentially to mislead the opponents into thinking that the declarer may not hold the K. However, that is not the type of play that I am talking about.)

Even players who, otherwise, seem to play fairly well often follow this practice.

Do players on this site have a belief or practice that declarer should play the bottom card from a sequence in the closed hand? If so, why?

[Vampyr]

Maybe sometimes the declarer does not know which card will be the most deceptive, so tries the lowest hoping that the location of at least one of the higher cards will be in doubt.

[kuhchung]

http://dictionary.re...om/browse/suite

[1eyedjack]

If you conceal higher cards in certain cases you may expect to get a more reliably honest count (or whatever) signal from opponents, particularly the one second to play, each opponent expecting his partner to have a card that can win the trick.

In the more general case where declarer is missing a higher card (usually the highest unplayed card in the suit) you may be able to influence how long they hold it up. If (say) rapid drawing of as many rounds of trumps is desired, starting with a low honour may delay their taking the Ace. The second hand (holding the Ace) fears crashing partner’s trump honour, so ducks, allowing you to coninue immediately drawing trump and perhaps averting an adverse ruff.

Sometimes deceiving one defender, at the expense of likely exposing the position to the other defender, may be regarded as a profitable trade off. In some cases this may dictate the closed hand not playing the highest card (although most examples to illustrate this involve declarer following rather than leading to the suit)

[aguahombre]

With AXX in Dummy and the hidden KQJT9, you can lead a quack to check for sleaze.