gatorlaw

Some practical advice: (1) The "best" method to play is the one that both you AND YOUR PARTNER know and understand perfectly. A bad method completely understood and played perfectly is better than a perfect method poorly understood and played badly. (2) It doesn't help to play a great system if you don't have any partners to play it with. For example, "NT bidding the Scanian Way" is a fine method with lots of merit to it. You won't find anyone in America to play it with. So don't go there. (3) Don't reinvent the wheel. There are lots of complete methods already out there. Don't invent a homegrown one. Play something widespread enough that you'll find lots of partners to play it with. You'll get to play it more often and know it better. (4) Keep it as simple as possible. Complicated agreements about unusual situations rarely come up. When they do, they usually won't give you an advantage, and even when in theory they should result in a net gain, in practice either you or your partner will forget them often enough to result in a net loss. (5) Use similar bidding methods for similar situations. Let Meckstroth and Rodwell have a hundred specific different agreements to cover situations that seem to be similar. You're not Meckstroth and Rodwell, and that's not why they win anyway. (6) Complicated bidding methods use up mental energy you need for judgment about bidding, opening leads, defense, and declarer play. At a lecture, I heard Rodwell say he was really impressed with the accuracy of Helgamo and Hellness' relay system. When they gave it up, he asked them why. They said they had to put so much energy into the bidding they couldn't take all their tricks.

NT auctions are a good illustration of "the Balanced Hand Principle" and "the Concealed Hand Principle." The "Balanced Hand Principle" is that the unbalanced hand should describe itself to the balanced hand because only the balanced hand will know if there are duplication of values in the short suit. The "Concealed Hand Principle" is that, given a choice of methods, the hand that is going to be dummy should describe itself to the concealed hand. Giving away information about the concealed hand to the opponents results in better defense often enough so that it eliminates any gain to the declaring side. The practical effect of these ideas for NT bidding is that it's better for the responding structure to use transfers and describe responder's shortness to the balanced hand than it is to use two-way checkback and methods to have opener describe his pattern to responder.

Very good advice.