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"Most people" know approach forcing style very well. It's "simple", it's "obvious", and it's effective - because it's all they've ever played. "Most people" do not understand relays - frankly, even getting some to deal with Kickback responses or 1♠-2NT; 3♣ "any minimum, then 3♦ says 'reply the same steps as if you had extras last round'" is very difficult. And while I have never played a full relay system, I am quite certain that the judgement required when you know "3361, any 9+, if I ask any more we've lost 3NT" is very different - but probably no more difficult - than that which we all use after a similar amount of information passing in approach forcing. And of course, the only experience "most people" - even "most people who declaim about relay systems" have with understanding relay systems is playing against it, when the information comes one hand at a time, without the coherent skeleton. So, of course they won't be "easier to use". For most people. Add to that that there are just people for whom lots of memorization, especially with sensible guiding principles that can be used to regenerate the path at the table if necessary, is low-energy. I am one of them, at least I was 15 years ago. Those that aren't - especially those that will concentrate so hard on not forgetting the system that they don't have energy left to follow suit - are probably not suited to relays. I haven't played a full relay system, but I have 15 years of experience with Precision, half of that being full asking bid Precision. I can totally understand Tarzan here, because I frequently said the main advantage of Precision is "the system thinks for me, at least one round farther than standard." Because it's automated that much further, there are so many auctions that are mindless. Yes, of course, the reason it's mindless is that a huge amount of memorization and practise was put in beforehand; and yes, of course, artificial forgets were much harder to recover from than "when you're just bidding suits", but that really didn't happen often. And eventually, you *save* thinking energy for when it is needed. And I don't think you should really equate "it technically didn't matter so much" with "less effective". It sounds an awful lot more like "just as effective, in a 'swings and roundabouts' fashion" to me.

I'm unsure why West felt the need to keep the heart fit a secret throughout the auction.

Even thinking about bidding is an overbid Far too many players think that it’s against some set of rules, which I’ve never seen, to pass with an opening hand once an opp has opened the bidding. Yes, of course 2C could work out brilliantly, but it’s that fact that misleads people into unwise actions…’look…had I bid 2C, on this board we’d get a great result’.

Sorry for going off-topic, that's fascinating. "Less effective but easy to use" is the complete opposite of how most people describe relay systems.

I recall an interview with Simon de Wijs shortly after he and Bauke Muller made the switch from stone-age Dutch Acol to symmetric relay Precision. He thought it technically didn't matter so much but the advantage was that is is so much easier, you just do the relay auction like a headless chicken (as they say in Dutch) and the only times you have to make judgement is when you decide on the final contract, and when you decide whether to go go past the game level. I volunteered for a while in the Looier Bridge Club in Amsterdam where they teach a relay system to beginners. Now, this wasn't one of the good relay systems used by de Wijs/Muller and similar, it was just something weird which the owner of the club had made up. But it got beginners to the level where they could reach sensible contracts most of the time much faster than those beginners who were taught natural methods. The downside was that it sucked. Anyway, I considered using a relay system for the exercise I started with in this thread. The main reason for not doing it is that it wouldn't be very original. There are lots of people who have toyed with relay systems, and the only thing I could add to that would be to make it truly fibonacci while maximizing some other benchmarks such as getting relayer to declare as often as possible, at the expense of making it much more difficult to memorize than normal SR. I just didn't find that very interesting.

https://tinyurl.com/2h6vsy2t So the auction goes (1♠)-p-(1NT)-p (2♦)-x-(xx)-p (p)-3♣-(p)-3NT (x)-a.p. -1100 Whether East's pass after the redouble is penalty or scrambling is a different issue (personally I think it should be penalty but East's hand is more consistent with scrambling), but it shouldn't matter here as West's 3♣ bid shouldn't show values regardless. 3♣ was explained as 8-17 points, and then E just has to pass as W will rarely have something close to 17. I am not sure why E bid 3NT.

I think you can get better results by putting that same amount of effort into a non-relay system. Going a step further, I think one of the main ways relay can be very good is because you have discussed the meanings of your calls with your partner at all, instead of just winging it. I do like scans and denial cue bids, but they come with a host of other questions (if you have shown your shape in standard, why not play them there? Plenty of XYZ sequences have complete shape and strength descriptions, as do certain 2/1 and reverse auctions. Denial bids or control asking bids can also be more descriptive after preemptive or jump auctions. Also this is primarily relevant for slam territory, and slam simply isn't on very often). Edit: I got a bit curious again, so I pulled up the last 96 boards on vugraph by Woolsey - Bramley (since I think they play KK Relay over 1C). They had 2 relay auctions, both of which ended in 4M making 11 tricks (identical to the other table). Incidentally they also missed a grand over a 1♣-1♦ start that was found at the other table after a 1♣-1♠ start - presumably an upgrade in a strong club system?