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I had to look this one up. It turns out my partner and I came up with the same solution and we didn't realise someone else had named it. It works well though. Article on it, in case anyone wants to know.

Even if you're playing a style where 2H is your default with nothing interesting to say, surely the 3D bid by South shows 6-3 in the red suits. Otherwise why not raise diamonds the round earlier?

Frequently when both partners take slightly conservative actions, or even simply both have maximums for their bid, the result can look rather bad. IMO, that's the case here. Both North and South made reasonable decisions, so nobody is to blame even though they missed game. My guess is that at most tables West didn't open 1S, so North got to show their balanced 15-count. The same logic applies when both partners take reasonable but aggressive actions. The outcome can be silly even though nobody did anything wrong.

Indeed. To quote:

Caveat: This entire post is unsuitable for the Novice and Beginner Forum. Apologies for that. Yeah that's the other difficult bit. Sometimes 2NT is a useful natural bid so you are actually giving up something valuable at times. David has provided one set of guidelines, but my current notes have: This is pretty broad because we've gone for simplicity in the rules. It includes auctions like 1♣ - (2♠) - 2NT and 1♣ - (P) - P - (2♠); 2NT. But not 1♣ - (2♠) - P - (P); 2NT. The fourth point rules out a bunch of auctions where we've opened or overcalled a major, since 2NT is a cue raise with 4+ support most of the time. Point 3 is the hazy one, and there is a lot of experience in interpreting that one. A simple example is 1♣ - (1♠) - P - (2♠); X - (P) - 2NT. Game is clearly still some sort of a possibility, but we argue that since responder has shown a weak hand (by not acting over 1♠ and then not passing the t/o double) that point 3 is not met. So 2NT there is two places to play. For completeness we need another point which is something like "the hand bidding 2NT has shown a weak hand with a limited range." Still a lot of experience and discussion in that though. Here's another set of rules for when it applies, from a different pair. This is closer to David's description. Yes, there are sequences where 2NT G/B is illogical or poor. But we've made a conscious decision to live with that in exchange for simplicity of application. If you do introduce it, my advice is to use a simple set of rules so that everyone can get used to it. And follow the rules rather than trying to apply logic to work out the agreement at the table. Once you're happy, then you can play around with it. For instance: You can start adding exceptions where 2NT means something else, to get rid of some of the quirks. 2NT as a raise is useful in a lot of places, even for minor suits. Although in minors you may want to use 2NT as the bad raise, to only steal NT when you're unlikely to play in 3NT. There's a strong argument that 2NT should be the "good" part of G/B in a lot of places (rightsiding NT and getting your suit in quickly when they might compete) and "bad" in others. Theoretically better, but you have to really want that small advantage.

My experience with adding Good/Bad into a practiced partnership of experienced players, but who have not already played G/B in another serious partnership, is that it takes a long time to fully understand and internalise the implications of the convention. I warned the last pair before we added it that it would take a year before it became natural. They both laughed at me, but it was almost exactly a year later when they said they were comfortable with it. And these pairs all practiced seriously and placed well in major tournaments, so it's one of the bigger changes you can make. The reason it takes so long is that you have to recognise all the times when it's right for you to bid 2NT, right for you to skip 2NT, and then recognise all those times when partner had the same decision to make. You also have the hands where you actually want to bid a natural 2NT and you have to remember in time to work out that's not an option. When you're learning it and playing in the middle of a serious event, it's really easy to miss the situations. On the other hand, once you get it down you can easily add it in the next partnership. If you're serious and willing to put in the effort, it really does help competitive auctions.

Don't you ever check your work, even if you're fairly sure you're right? The number of players that always play in tempo is tiny, even at major events.

I didn't consider the brooding possibility - you may be on to something.

This was the other table in a robot challenge. Somehow the robots got lost on their way to game.

Holding onto the low spade is fairly important. If declarer has a full count of the hand, discarding it guarantees declarer gets it right. Even if not, it changes declarer's thought process in a way that is not always obvious and very likely worth working through the permutations. Even an expert defender would want to make sure they have counted everything properly before discarding the club. Given the facts it appears East drew a false inference through a variation in tempo, but that South had a "demonstrable bridge reason" for this variation. Law 73D1 tells us this break in tempo is not an infraction. Law 73E2 tells us that the director can only adjust if South could have been aware the change in tempo could work to their benefit AND if south had no demonstrable bridge reason for doing so. IMO, the first condition is met but the second one is not. So no adjustment.

I agree with Mike - there are better uses for responses to an invitational 4NT. My experience is that we gain a fair bit when we find a fit and play the better minor-suit slam on marginal values, and I can't remember the last time I've missed not having an ace-asking bid in these situations. None of my serious partnerships have Gerber either - we use 1NT-4C as hearts so we can choose which side should declare. For what it's worth, my current preferred treatment over something like 1NT-4NT is that opener can accept and show 5-card suits at the 5-level, 6-card suits at the 6-level, and bid 5NT to ask for 4-card suits up the line.

For another view, there is a top US pro who has long held the view that: at matchpoints in 3rd seat at favourable vulnerability it is a huge winning position to open 3C on: xx xx xxxx xxxxx It's a bit extreme even for me (and I'm not averse to preempting a 5-card suit here), but he's won a lot of national titles so it's worth at least paying attention to the idea. It is clear to me that opening 3C on a wide range of hands under these conditions often turns the bidding into a guessing game where we have a significant advantage, so not doing it when we have something that looks like a middle of the range 3C bid gives up a positive position for no real reason.

The documentation says that the shape call can handle as many shape descriptions as you want without slowing it down, so having only one shape call should make it run faster. That's probably not such an issue when you're only producing one hand at a time, but it's just a habit I've gotten into. I also like to name the intermediate constraints for two reasons - I can build up the query and test parts of it at a time, and I can reuse individual parts in a later query (I have a few documents with saved tests). It just matches the way I put these calls together. Given the shapes you want to include, you can just reduce the bottom section to: hcp(south)>9 and shape(south, any xxxx - any 4333 - any 4432 - any 4441 - any 5332) The first 10 hands I generated with this would all happily overcall a strong NT. However, you are including 4M/5m hands, which are not typically 2M overcalls playing Cappelletti. The only documentation I've found is linked to the test page I mentioned above. It mentions a bunch of examples at the bottom of the syntax page, but TBH I've never looked through them so I don't know how useful they would be.

I don't believe the syntax includes a check for dealer. It does have a dealer() call, but that sets the dealer rather than checks for it, and I'm not sure if it works in generating practice hands. What I've always done in your situation is to set up South as the strong NT and give West the overcall, and then use the BBO checkbox to 'Randomly rotate generated deals 180 degress'. If we really want to give us the best chance, we just agree to pass if we're not the hand with the strong NT. It doesn't always work but you'll get a bunch of practice this way. My first stab at a set of constraints for this scenario are below. It covers penalty doubles, single-suited overcalls, both majors, 5M/4m, and any 5/5 hands. It obviously can be made more sophisticated, but it should capture most hands that would overcall. 1NT_S = shape(south, any 4333 + any 4423 + any 5332) and hcp(south)>=15 and hcp(south)<=17 W_double = hcp(west)>15 W_ocall = shape(west, any 6xxx + any 7xxx + any 55xx + 5xxx + x5xx - any 5332) and hcp(west)>=10 Capp_W = W_double or W_ocall condition 1NT_S and Capp_W P.S. If you don't already know, you can construct and test your hand generator scripts at https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/dealer/dealer.php.

I open 3C as South. I pass as North. And I consider other actions as significant errors of judgment. Mycroft covered the salient points well.

It should show a good hand with a good suit and interest in competing further. Occasionally an adventurous overcaller will redouble with a bad hand where they fear LHO is about to pass for penalties, and they prefer to test opponent agreements and nerves.

That’s fine if your version of the system to allow that. We don’t have that luxury.

It’s whether you lead 3rd or 5th from a six-card suit.

This might help: https://blakjak.org/def_1nt01.htm

Don’t knock canasta - it’s how I learned to count. For a while the numbers went up to ace and then stopped.

3NT. Hamman's rule in action.

2♦=♦+♠ 2♥=♥+♠ 2♠=♣+♠ All 4+/4+ and can be very weak depending on vul. I've never played this, but there are a couple of pairs who do and they seem to get good results against me far too often when the bids come up.

This may not be a minimum. Just for lols, I present the hand my RHO balanced with over my 3H preempt this afternoon: [hv=pc=n&n=sq543h6dj732ckq76]133|100[/hv] At vul vs not, no less. Not my choice, but he's played in more Bermuda Bowl semifinals than I have, so who am I to argue?

I’m not sure it’s good form to post hands from other players, particularly if you are going to put their name in the title.