lilboyman

I would make a second Heart cue in lieu of 3 Diamonds. This tells partner I have a maxi-Michaels. With a true clunker partner can still pass and with better hands can proceed to higher levels.

Partner's 4 Club bid leads me to believe partner's working values are in Clubs and Diamonds. Since my singleton or void Heart did not stop partner from having slam interest, 4 NT seems easy next call for me holding a five-loser hand.

With my regular partners, we use the rule of 2/3/4. With only 5 winners 2 Spades would be the limit of this hand. Likewise, we would not open this 1 Spade because our discipline requires 2 defensive tricks to make an opening bid of 1 of a suit. The latter agreement keeps us out of 5 or 6 Spades when partner has 18 plus hand and to make intelligent decisions on competitive hands at the 5 level.

Since we are playing imps at unfavorable vulnerability, I expect partner to have decent values for the negative double, certainlly not more than 9 losers and decenent Hearts. Under these conditions, 3 Hearts should be safe. If partner is not so conservative, pass.

By starting the bidding in Hearts instead of Spades and then making a splinter raise in Clubs, some information about partners hand has been lost. So, I disagree with the Heart start. Open a Spade and partner gives some kind of informative raise. As it is now, you have 5 losers and partner has shown cover for only one loser. While partner may have the King of Spades there will be days that it is not there. That being said, with the King of Spades and the Queen or doubleton of Hearts, I expect partner would bid the slam if you show second round control of Hearts by bidding 5 Hearts. Hopefully, partner's Diamond or Club losers can be pitched on long Hearts before opponents can take them.

I don't like Drury because it doesn't come up very often due to aggressiveness of my opening bids. Thus, when it does come up, if my partner doesn't forget it, then I do.