[antonylee]

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Matchpoints, club game.
The HK goes to to partner's 4 and declarer's ace. Declarer returns a spade and you decide to hop ace, partner playing the 2.
1. What does partner's 2 mean? Count? Attitude? SP? (You have agreed UCDA, usually attitude to partner's leads and count to declarer's).
2. How do you defend?

[SteveMoe]

Would suspect count is most prevalent unless we agreed to play obvious switch - then it's suit preference. So either ♥ H or ♣x ...

[nekthen]

The 2♠ should be count, so p has 3♠. What was 4♥? Would he encourage with the 10? Is he giving count, because the K has been lead? If the ♥ were 33 declarer might have held up the A. Why did p play the 4 if they are 33? Maybe he has 1043 and did not want to play the 10?

If p has 4 he has the ten as he did not play the 3. If p has 2 cards he may have the ten

I assume East has a 12 count and p has 4. Any less and he surely runs and there is no room for more. Can we defeat this contract if p does not have ten ♥? Seems unlikely to me.

I would play the 2♥ next. This only costs if declarer started with A10(x) which seems unlikely on the play to date, although I do not know the methods well enough to be sure

[jodepp]

I think we're reading way too much into pard's ♠2. Without going into the nuts and bolts too much:

We know partner has 2-4 hcp and thus one useful card - the ♠Q, ♦K or ♣A/K. I think declarer would remove 1NTX to a five-card suit if he had one, so partner has at least three spades. Long story short, I think we need partner to have at least four spades to the 10 to be setting this regardless of what card partner has.

I don't think we're setting this unless partner has the ♠Q (I leave it to the reader to work out why the other cards rate not to work). I'm exiting a spade - if declarer flies, we can cross to partner's ♥10 (or spot) to cash out. If declarer ducks, I cash out hearts and exit, prepared to dump the ♦QJ if declarer plays that suit.

[alok c]

delete

[ifluffette]

Simple case of Smith Echo. Partner's card, when count irrelevant, says I like your lead or I dont like your lead. You can play it std or udca.

[echo25]

I agree it is Smith. Count doesn't give partner any useful information. If you don't play Smith, it's lavinthal.

[WesleyC]

As others have mentioned, you might consider adding the Smith Echo to your partnership agreements.

Regarding this hand, what is the rush to win the ♠A? Looks better to play the ♠J and at least gather an extra round of information before being on lead.

[Zelandakh]

WesleyC, on 2015-July-11, 21:20, said:

As others have mentioned, you might consider adding the Smith Echo to your partnership agreements.

A pair certainly might consider it but to write that it definitely is Smith without any agreement about it is ridiculous.