Bridge - Knockout Teams at the Las Vegas Regional - NYTimes.com Look at the West hand and the auction in the diagramed deal. What would you lead against six spades? Your two-spade overcall was a Michaels Cue-Bid showing at least 5-5 in hearts and either minor. Partner's four-no-trump advance asked for your minor. Bridge students sometimes lament that "textbook" deals never occur at the table. Obviously that is not true. One reason for their perception is that textbook plays are clear-cut but can be harder to spot in at-the-table deals. Also, there are plays that are well known by experts but not by the less experienced. One is a suit-preference lead at Trick 1. Usually this occurs when the leader is confident that his partner will be ruffing immediately. Then, the card led tells partner which suit to return at Trick 2. His lowest card calls for the lower ranking of the other two side suits, or an unnecessarily high card calls for the higher ranking of those side suits. Sometimes, though, there is a similar but different reason for a suit-preference lead, which is highlighted in this deal from a knockout team event at the Las Vegas Regional last month. Sitting West was Chris Compton of Dallas, partnering Jacob Morgan of Madison, Wis. Compton used a Michaels Cue-Bid, then found himself on lead against six spades. Judging that the opponents would not have bid slam with two quick losers, Compton desperately led his club deuce. This worked perfectly when Morgan won with the king, and, reading the deuce as a suit-preference signal for diamonds, returned that suit to give Compton a ruff to defeat the slam. At the other table six spades made. Plus 100 and plus 1,430 gave the Compton and Morgan team 17 international match points on the board. Although their team did not win this event, it collected 134.7 master points during the regional, which took Compton over the 30,000 mark.