Jinksy

Also nice try, but no. I will confirm that E passed as dealer (sanely?)

Good guess, but no.

[hv=pc=n&w=sat642hdak63caqj4&e=s5hajt3dqct987653&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1sp1n(semiforcing)p2d2hppdppp]266|200[/hv] No special agreements beyond 2/1. I don't know what a first round 3♣ bid would have meant, but probably some kind of spade raise. We managed to take this one off, when 6♣ is the coldest trump contract the world has ever seen. Who - or rather which call(s) - is most responsible?

Try and guess the bidding sequence that landed EW is 3♠ (off 1, with 5♦ making): [hv=pc=n&w=skj54haj9742dq93c&e=sq9hdat8754cqj752]266|100[/hv] E dealer. NV vul, IMP scoring in case relevant. No unusual conventions involved.

I did describe it in the OP. (ETA - changed it to be clearer)

3♣ showing a club singleton?

[hv=pc=n&w=saqjhaq5dqt7cak97&e=s32ht98432dj94cqj&d=n&v=e&b=9&a=ppp1c(Cs%20or%20balanced%2C%20unlimited)p2h(6%2BHs%2C%200-a%20bad%205%20HCPs)p2n(Shortage%20ask)p3h(min)ppp]266|200[/hv] IMPs. Other responses to 2N would have shown shortage (nonmin), so if E wanted to encourage he'd have bid 3N. The arguments each gave for their conservatism:

I agree up to 4♥, but what do you do after RKCB if P shows 1? If you sign off, he'll have Txx xxxx xxx AKx. If you bid 6, he'll have Kxx xxxx KQx xx.

Are we really supposed to be playing opener for a first seat psyche? The K♥ looks to me like a sure trick opposite xx, so while E should have done something more encouraging, I think W was really wet.

Absent agreements about how to deal with reverses, I would splinter after 2♦. Maybe the 4-4 fit will play better than the 5-4 one... probably not, but it also gets across more about the strength of my hand than 3♣, and more about its texture than 4♣ - and saves some room for slamhunting.

What systems do people play after such sequences as (1M) 1N (P) ? I'm looking for something relatively simple, but a bit more robust than 'Stayman and RSTs... but probably not into their suit'.

Club for me. P needs very little to bring the suit in (far less than he'd need to X 3♣), and I have no reason to think the opps don't have a surfeit of points, so a passive lead looks like giving up. I expect it to do even better DD, where P will be able to not block with Qxxxx and xxx in dummy.

Either minor looks plausible. Slightly lead towards the Q♦, since if declarer has AK he might play to drop it anyway.

It is not that hard for a passed hand to X showing some specified hand type in this situation and advancer to pass it out with a smattering of points. In a room of strong NTers at MPs, this is basically irrelevant: minus N-hundred will barely score better than minus (N+1)-hundred if N is >= 2 (which it probably is here).

The question isn't just which will play better. You also risk just missing game if 2♦ gets passed out and (prob more realistically) risk giving the opps room to find theirs/find a good sac. So for me it's a 4♥ bid directly over 1N.

The NT was an honest 12-14.

I don't agree with it here, but I don't think it's crazy. If we were in a room full of strong NTers and/or reasonably strong players, then we're virtually guaranteed a bottom if he passes out - at best we'll drift a couple off undoubled, and there's still plenty of time left for them to reopen with a double, have that passed around to P, and then for them to crunch us in whatever suit we end up in (or possibly bid game over it). Stayman would at least spin the wheel, giving us a shot at finding a decent score if I show up with a five card non-club suit or just a suitable Moyesian, or perhaps encouraging the opps to compete to their part score, etc. The actual room seemed like a fairly typical club UK session in the UK, where 90% of the pairs were playing a weak NT and probably wouldn't have found a reopening X, so I don't think Stayman has nearly as much to gain. [ETA it doesn't show the vul here, but we are, so 2 off is MP-doom)

1Xes

I guess it was too easy :P I had an interesting question as N, though. With S a passed hand, and us playing an aggressive Garbage Stayman that lets us try for our best major fit on any 44(nn), and a feeling of the impending doom, I seriously thought about passing Stayman. My feeling in the end was that my hand was slightly too good (on the off chance P was inviting), and my Cs slightly too bad. Wondering whether I should have anyway, or was insane even to contemplate it...

[hv=pc=n&s=st865ht73dkt6c543&n=saq9h952dajck9876]133|200[/hv] S dealer, at MPs. The final contract was 2♦ by north on what, I think, was at least a sane auction, if not necessarily the ideal one. Can you guess how we got there? :)

What methods do you play? It's a nice hand for something like 2-way checkback, which lets you explore a ♠ and ♦ fit at leisure.

3-bids are nat, all other 2-bids are the same playing strength (10-13ish total points), 5+ of the suit.

This idiotic opening bid evolved after a lot of testing in which it got a lot of good results. On this hand, your options are to bid the same 4♠-1 the other teams are in, and give yourself an outside chance of being the only one to make having concealed your hand much better, or just make 3♠. Bidding an obviously doomed contract slowly seems obviously worse than punting one of two reasonable ones.

[hv=pc=n&n=sakj865hakdt2caq2]133|100[/hv] Teams.

I can't see any gain for bidding this way vs bidding 3♥. It just gives opps that little bit of extra info about P's hand, and potentially means he's playing it, having revealed so much. I surely don't want to be in 3N, anyway. Opps are very likely to find the diamond lead, so we're going to need 9 tricks off the top, and with as much as AKxxx Kxxxx x Ax, P would have opened something stronger.