wank

you can play a weak NT as part of any system, but it has bigger knock-on effects than most people give it credit for. the main advantage is it's very pre-emptive. with regard to the downside, most people fixate on the ease with which the opps can double it and collect a fat penalty, but this is pretty rare and largely a function of selective memory. the more important downside is with regard to detrimental effects in other aspects of your bidding which are rather more subtle and complicated.

yes 2c all day

if you don't want to learn lebensohl - most people on bbo will never have heard of it - just play bids non-forcing, double take-out

your opps were talking out of their arses. it's entirely normal to double 1s there with any hand with 4 hearts that's worth forcing to the 2-level (the exception would be a GF hand with 5 clubs and 4 hearts in which case better to start with your 5 card suit to avoid perverting your shape).

clear pass

1) no fast arrival in no-trumps. 3nt should show extras, in which case i'd bid on. 2) 2♥ was fine - it shows a 6th heart. 2524 bids 2s.

you asked about weak 2s. a multi isn't a weak 2.

3♥ - this hand is all offense so i'll go for a pre-empt of some variety. i like a heavy pre-empting style, but with a 6421 shape this is too heavy for 2h even for me, unless i'm second in.

your job isn't to decide for him what he should know or not know at any particular point. if you can understand it, it would be arrogant to assume a player would not. if a player can't be bothered to listen, that's his fault.

i play the same as awm over vul weak major 2s and over non-vul weak major 2s ogust. reasoning should be obvious.

no transfers? surely you can have much more delicate auctions if responder tranfers to the minor where his values are before supporting with 3♥.

your partner must pass for the rest of the auction. however this should be explained to you by the director before you chose what to do, so you might well decide to do something different than bidding 2NT, most likely gambling on 3NT.

is 3c over 1nt something odd for it?

these questions have nothing to do with 4th suit [colour] forcing. 4th suit forcing is when your side has bid the other 3 suits naturally, then bids the 4th suit. on hand 1 3c is normally played as not forcing. though it would be perfectly reasonable to play it as forcing. if you don't play support doubles, you can differentiate between the 2 types of 2c bid by doubling then bidding clubs later as opposed to bidding them directly. if so, it's normal to play doubling first as forcing and bidding them direct as non-forcing. if 3c is non-forcing for you, 4c is natural and forcing. on hand 2, 2h is forcing as it's a reverse (i.e. respnder must goto the 3 level to give preference to your first suit). as 2H is forcing, it can be used for all the natural heart hands. 3H can therefore be saved for something different. a common choice would be a splinter in support of spades (with short hearts). whatever else you play, 4d is a splinter in support of spades (with short diamonds). as for 4H, following the same logic as before, it shouldn't show hearts. a popular choice would be exclusion keycard blackwood for spades (heart void).

the fault is your's for opening 2nt. making off-shape opening bids is something you do to circumvent awkward rebid problems, it shouldn't be routine. if you have no such issues you should open at the 1-level and try to describe your hand - it's not hard to get to nts later. this you can do easily on this hand, by opening 1c and bidding 2H over 1D (natural game force), 1S (natural reverse, forcing for 1 round but you will plough on to game) or 1NT (same again). if partner bids 1H, hopefully, you have another call available to show a flat balanced hand of similar strength so you can now bid 4H to show a strong hand with hearts and clubs. If 4H over 1H could include a balanced 18 you might need to be more creative, for instance by splintering in a kx suit or something.

you didn't go wrong. 4sx is 200 or 500 and 4h (only 420 if it makes) might go off so you're getting rather poor odds. saving on these cards would a major faux pas. yes in matchpoints the magnitude of the difference is irrelevant unlike in teams. however, this cuts both ways. many pairs won't be bidding 4h. the only way you can hope to beat pairs whose opps didn't 4h is by defending and hoping it goes off. edit: there's nothing wrong with 3s. at these colours at matchpoints it's a very serious bid. you don't do it on shite ready to go -2 or 3 like you might non-vul or at teams - -200 is the kiss of matchpoints death. yes you could show a raise in other ways, but those give the opps more room.

whenever he's got a fit, a good suit of his own which will provide tricks irrespective of responder's holding and controls in the 2 other suits. something like kxx kxx ax kqjtx

yes definitely think about slam - it would be entirely reasonable just to jump to 6nt. you won't have an issue with tricks as tyour hand is worth 7 of them on its own. the only issue is the opps cashing 2 first which is very odds against with about 30 high between you (don't forget that the opps lead passively versus 6nt so even if they hold ace and king of a suit between them, they won't normally lead one). being off 2 aces would be more of an issue than a missing AK, so it would be good to use gerber if you played that. you could bid 4d, assuming that's natural and then if partner signs off bid 5h, but you would need to be confident partner would know to sign off in 5nt with a lack of controls, which is obviously a big if at novice level. btw though it could be right to play in diamonds, i would always go for NTs here to protect any kings in partner's hand.

p 1d 1h 2nt 4c 6d would get the job done with a minimum of stress and minority agreements.

acol with a strong no trump is much better imo. the only top class pairs to have played acol in recent memory did so with a strong NT. this has the advantage that you can open 1M frequently as a pre-empt on your minimum openers. it's particularly joyful when you pick off their 4M contract by opening the suit.

imo this is the kind of situation where playing these european things you have to expect a linguistic problem and have them right down all the things they might have led from. of course this is rather time consuming, and might be an issue if you're playing the pairs with 2 board rounds. i much prefer the EBU style convention cards where you just ring what you would lead from various holdings. wbf style convention cards really do have a lot of pointless crap on them - the only things i care about on a convention card are leads, carding and opening bids. who really checks things like opps' nt overcall at the start of a round so they can discuss their defence to raptor? or in the subsequent bidding section, who really needs to check the card to see if your checkback is 2 way, 3 way, 1 way or whatever? imo RAs should purge all this extraneous stuff which would encourage people to take completing the important bits more seriously.

it's absurd. mainly because it's too strong for it. with 3 first round controls and a very good suit it should have opened the bidding in the first place. there's not much wrong with bidding it on a 5-4 shape though - if you don't have 4+ clubs, you must have a balanced hand in which case diamonds is at worst a 5-2 fit, which is perfectly reasonable for the 2-level.

4th highest of the longest and strongest

you normally don't need to - you won't have a game on if partner wasn't strong enough to reverse into hearts himself and partner normally has 6 diamonds. yes, if you have something like a 5404 shape you'll have to bid 2h and wish it was non-forcing, but saving space to get to the right game and slam is much more important than occasionally playing the wrong part score.

oops double post