Considering all the depressing news I usually post about hard-to-beat openings, I thought it time to post something on an eminently defeatable opening. Sometimes I have a little trouble with it, so I thought it worth trying to work out a solution in more detail to avoid mistakes. As always in duo, even bad openings can win if you make a single error in your defence…
So: FW, the favourite of beginning & some mid-level players. It’s an interesting opening in that it looks pretty good but is actually one of the flimsiest of the F openings. I think this can actually be defeated by orange in ALL cases, though I must confess that I haven’t (inevitably) worked it all out. I would be very interested to hear from people who have suggestions for lines I should examine in more detail.
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UPDATE: I’m no longer happy with the line given below, as I think violet has a strong reply to the orange Z5. I will try to post more shortly. I will keep this page here nonetheless as an interesting false start.
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Here’s the basic orange response:
Violet must reply on the left. (If violet plays on the right, orange plays I5(D7u) and the game is easy: I won’t spell out that line here as it should only require basic understanding of duo strategy.) There are basically two possible replies: a hang or a kiss. My solution is simple: if it’s a hang, play Z5(K8ullu); if it’s a kiss, play F(K8uul). I’ll consider the various cases in turn.
Case 1a) Hang and circle
The usual pieces for the violet hang are Z5(E7lddl), T5(E7ldd) or N5(D9ddld or dldd). If violet circles, orange should keep going aggressively rather than block until violet pokes up around the side. Here’s the line:
Note that orange F grabs the V in the nook of the violet F (& note that orange Z4 is dependent on keeping the W for a block). This game should produce an orange win of about 3 points. If violet plays T5 not Z5 then orange needs a different path, playing W(A8urur) to grab the L4 spot in the nook and using a different blocking method on the right (you figure it out).
If it’s an N hang, then it’s a little trickier, but the I5 is still the best bet, I think. At worst it’s a tie but here’s my packing for a 3-point win:
Moves: 1. F – X / 2. W – N / 3. N – Z5 / 4. Z5 – I5 / 5. I5 – T5 / 6. T5 – F (very important to tee up the I3!) / 7. L5 and the rest is hole-filling and packing.
Or if you like to make things exciting this is a good line too, & possibly a larger win (I haven’t worked it out in full but in practice it can lead to bigger wins versus players who aren’t good with open games):