A Defense Against a Flannery Opening.....

[PFormaini]

You are West and hear the following Flannery auction:

 

S.............N

 

2♦*.....5♦

 

*- 12-16 HCP, 5 Hearts and 4 Spades

 

Partner leads the Q♣ and here is what you see in dummy:

 

♠Q

♥5 4

♦K Q J 10 9 8 6 5 4

♣ 7

 

You hold:

 

♠K 10 8 7 6

♥J 10 6

♦A 7

♣A 9 5

 

You win the club Ace at trick one.

 

How do you defend so as to defeat 5 diamonds whenever it is defeatable?

[awm]

Declarer seems to have ♣K. If he has both major suit aces as well, the hand is over (he can ditch a heart on his marked club king).

 

So it seems like we need to guess which major suit ace partner has and return that suit. The way to do this is to return a low spade.

 

If partner has spade ace the hand is down. Suppose declarer lacks the heart ace. If he lets the spade ride to the queen then he cannot get back to hand without our getting in to play a heart. If he wins the spade ace in his hand, he cannot pitch both hearts, since he has no more spade winners and has only one club winner, so we will eventually get the heart ace anyway.

[PFormaini]

awm:

 

VERY nice. And absolutely right1 :(

 

The point is to realize that:

 

1. Partner MUST have a major suit Ace or the defense has no chance.

 

2. The A♥ cannot run away even if you fail to lead hearts now, EXCEPT.......

 

3. If you foolishly lead the ♠K to 'smother' the board's ♠Q. Leading the ♠K loses the hand if declarer has the ♠A J, since now he can pitch BOTh hearts from dummy - and partner's ♥A will wither on the vine.

[kenrexford]

If Declarer has one Ace, he can ditch something on the club King, but not two somethings. So, we need to decide which wrong guess works better for us.

 

If Declarer has the heart Ace-King but not the spade Ace, he wins the heart to play the club King, ditching a spade, ruffs a spade to dummy to pull trumps, and the hand is over.

 

If Declarer has the spade Ace but not the heart Ace, he can ditch one heart but not two on the club. So, when we get in with the diamond Ace, we can revert to hearts.

 

So, we guess the spade Ace is what Opener has.

 

The one card we don't return is the spade King.

[PFormaini]

Actually, 'deciding which Ace partner has' is not necessary. A spade shift caters to EITHER possibility - as long as we do not lead the ♠KING.

 

If partner has the ♥A, he does not need a heart shift at trick 2. The low spade shift works equally well. Partner will always get his ♥A later.

 

But if partner has the ♠Ace, we *must* shift to spades at Trick 2 - or declarer throws dummy's spade loser on the ♣K - and makes his contract.