First Lead & Underleading Aces
Initial Lead from a suit headed by an Ace without the King?
This is such an important source of loss for the poorer players at club duplicates that it is worth discussing in depth.
First one must have compassion, for it is difficult for some people to simultaneously hold apparently contradictory opinions.
Underleading aces as an initial lead at no-trumps is a common enough strategy which normally works well if you are leading from a four card or longer suit. Underleading aces as an initial lead against a suit contract is a recipe for loss.
Many club players cannot cope with two opposing rules for making an opening lead which depends of what type of contract they are playing against. This is one common reason why you often see silly results on the traveller in a club duplicate.
Even the palooka can see that underleading an ace against a suit contract loses to a singleton King in dummy or declarer.
Of course it usually also loses to K x in declarers hand when partner holds the Queen. The key difference in a suit contract is that the ace can be ruffed later which cannot happen at no-trump contracts. t there are so many other ways to lose by underleading an Ace against a suit contract and below is just one example.
Imagine you are East defending against a 4 spade contract, partner leads the 2 of hearts, dummy goes down on the table and hearts you see are:
Dummy plays the 3 and you reason that partner would not underlead an ace against a suit contract so has probably got 3 or 4 to the Jack (the only other honour missing). If partner has 4 to the Jack (much more likely as most people do not like leading from 3 to the Jack), declarer has the singleton Ace, so a small card will fetch the Ace leaving K 10 over dummys Q 9.
Imagine your horror when partner turns out to have forgotten it is a suit contract, has underlead the Ace from A 8 4 2, and a surprised declarer wins with his/her singleton Jack.
Check whether it is a suit contract or no-trump contract before you decide to underlead and Ace unless you like losing at bridge as well as upsetting partners.
Enjoy your bridge.
R. Wells 
Simple Tips with Big Impact 
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