My least favorite convention is Flannery 2♦. This bid can be used in any seat to show five hearts, four spades, and 11-15 HCP. This hand occurs fairly often, and it can cause rebidding problems when partner responds with 1NT or 2 of a minor. The hand is too weak for a reverse, and usually no good rebid is available. Another advantage is that players who use Flannery can assume that a 1♠ response to a 1♥ opener shows at least five spades. This makes it much easier to find a 5-3 fit.

On the other hand, Flannery users forgo the weak 2♦ bid, which also occurs pretty often. That means that preempts in diamonds can only be done at the three (or higher) level. A Flannery opener can also lead to some perverse auctions, which is what happened to my partner and me in Saturday’s pairs game.

With both sides vulnerable, my partner dealt and opened 2♦. I was caught with this mess:

♠J3 ♥Q ♦T8643 ♣QT976This is close to the worst hand imaginable for responding to Flannery. In the first place, the opponents probably have most of the points, so the objective was just to avoid a disastrous partial. I also knew that the opponents held the majority of cards in both major suits, which meant that, if we had to declare, we should play in a minor. My clubs were better than my diamonds, but we were already past 2♣. My only viable choice was to pass, which is what I did. The left hand opponent, who held ♦AK72 also passed.

Here was my partner’s hand:

♠AQT2 ♥AJ9762 ♦J ♣J5Yes, he had six hearts, not five. Since he had a safe rebid of 2♥, I am not sure why he did not bid 1♥. Maybe he was worried about missing a 4-4 spade fit.

So, we ended up playing in a 5-1 fit after all. My partner played it very well and only got set by one trick. Our result was below average but not catastrophic. If we had used standard techniques, my partner would have bid 1♥, and I would have passed or bid 1NT. If I did the former, we would have probably played 2♥, which goes down one against the best defense. If I passed, the opponents, who were a good team, might have found their best strain, which was no trump, and achieved a better result than they did by passing.

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This was by no means my worst experience with Flannery. That came at a sectional tournament. On that occasion both sides were vulnerable, and as dealer I was the one who opened 2♦ with this maximum Flannery hand:

♠Q875 ♥AQ983 ♦T ♣AK7Needless to say, my partner alerted my bid and even explained it to the left hand opponent. She bid 3♦, obviously a preempt. My partner had to concoct a bid from this hand:

♠K432 ♥JT74 ♦6 ♣QJ94He figured that we had game in either major if and only if I had a maximum, which, of course, I did. He bid 3♥ to show heart support and invite to game. Unfortunately, neither of us had a plan that took into account the other opponent’s bid, which was 4♠!

Well, I (correctly) did not think that we could make 5♥, and I was not confident that we could set 4♠. For all that I knew, the spade bidder could be looking at nine of them. I left it up to my partner, who knew exactly what my trump holding was, to decide what action, if any, to take. I passed.

What a dilemma he faced! He knew that the opponents held exactly five spades. He also knew that we had the majority of the points. He was therefore certain that they could never make 4♠. However, if he doubled, LHO would almost certainly pull it to 5♦, and it was possible that they could actually make that. So he just passed.

Evidently RHO had thought that LHO was bidding Michaels. He held three hearts in his own hand, I had five, as my partner had explained, and my partner had supported my suit, which certainly showed another three, at least. So RHO must have somehow believed that his partner also had five. His reasoning required a deck with at least 16 hearts!

So, we set them three or four tricks; there was some dispute, but it did not matter. We could have set them a lot more if we had just drawn trumps. According to Deep Finesse, we could have made four hearts, which is what I was ready to bid, or four spades! Five diamonds played by LHO would have been down three. If we doubled and set them three, we would have received 800 points, which would have been even better than making a game.

Had we not been playing Flannery, the bidding would have gone 1♥ – 3♦ – 3♥. I don’t know what RHO would have bid, but it would not have been 4♠.