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

Of course 2C could work out. That’s why people keep bidding on garbage. So they don’t have their values? They get away with it for numerous reasons The opps don’t know how to catch them speeding….either they forget to double or they blow the defence Partner somehow knows not to take you seriously or is incapable of bidding properly so passes when it’s clear to bid The cards lie well for you Me? I try to bid as if I’m playing against strong players, since deliberately bidding badly, in order to take advantage of weak opps, isn’t something I enjoy plus it leads to bad habits, which may bite me when I do play strong opps. I also usually play with expert partners who will most definitely not expect a 2C overcall when half my hand is in a short suit, I have great defence, and a weak, short suit. Do I ‘want’ to bid? Yes. Do I think that bidding is good bridge? No. Give me a sixth club, which is equivalent, in terms of offence to an extra trick and, in terms of defence, makes my hand a little weaker, then I bid. The difference may seem unimportant but, to me, it’s extremely important. It’s like when I am asked by less experienced players about overcalling a strong 1N. The other day my LHO held 17 hcp and AK10xx in clubs. She bid. We were going -200 or -300 had she passed. We went +90 when we were able to get to 2D on our 4-4 fit. We got 100% of the mps. My advice to her was that one should NEVER make a one-suited overcall on a 5 card suit. So here,while I won’t say never bid 2C on five…rarely bid 2C on five and never without a good suit. Edit: one reason the game is so hard to get good at is because bad bridge wins often….just not as often as does good bridge. The weaker the opponents, the more often one gets away with, or even gets great results, from bad bridge. Which makes it easy to think that one is doing something right. If your goal is to be in as many auctions as possible, and to rely on your opps being weak players, go for it. If your goal is to one day compete with strong players, then learning discipline is a good way to start. Become someone known by partners to always have your values…that doesn’t mean become ultra conservative, btw. Edit. On reflection, I’m probably overstating my case. I think that, if you polled a range of experts, you’d get some votes for overcalling. I wouldn’t but I tend to the conservative side in these situations. One reason is that I’m primarily an imp player and 2m is the easiest contract to double and defend. We make it, we get 180 compared to maybe 90 or 50/100. We go down, especially two or more, and it’s likely a disaster. If we’re going down only two, I’d bet they can’t make game. Plus, if 2C is passed out, my sense is that we’re often -200 since we probably can’t get to dummy and RHO has club length or strength, for not reopening.

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If you reach that point and do not know whether you want to be in 3NT, you probably should have made a relay break to find out on the previous round. If the relay system does not allow such breaks, get a better system.

"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.