After a mini

[rhm]

To get more kinds of hands in: signoff with a 5+ card, invitational with 5, invitational with 6, GF with 5. Surely you knew that already, so why ask?

An often heard myth. Compare with 2-way Stayman:

 

Signoff with a 5+ card: Bid directly 2♥/2♠/3♣/3♦ (a clear advantage for 2-way Stayman when opener is not strong)

Invitational with 5: Bid 2♣ followed by 2♠/3♥, note you can stop in 2♠,(2♥ is garbage Stayman)

Invitational with 6: Bid 2♣ followed by 3♣/3♦/3♥/3♠ (the sixth heart may be unclear, a very minor deficiency)

GF with 5: Bid 2♦ followed by bidding your suit. With a strong two suiter you might bid the lower/cheaper suit, expecting opener to bid a 3 card major, once he has denied a 4 card major.

 

It is not like 2-way Stayman has any problem showing all these kind of hands below 3NT.

 

Rainer Herrmann

[gwnn]

OK, if you think there's no problem with them, cheers.

[Mbodell]

GF with 5: Bid 2♦ followed by bidding your suit. With a strong two suiter you might bid the lower/cheaper suit, expecting opener to bid a 3 card major, once he has denied a 4 card major.

 

Yuck. Game forcing with a 5 major and possibly another suit. Even slam curious or forcing with those shapes, that is going to suffer. It is also going to suffer from much more leakage of information then needed if you are staymaning and then asking partner to show 3 card support as well.

 

I'm not saying it is unplayable, because obviously a fair number of people - including some very good pairs - play it. But I think it has definite losses to transfers on some hands (and wins on others, mostly the signoff ones, although I think the case is overblown).

[rhm]

Yuck. Game forcing with a 5 major and possibly another suit. Even slam curious or forcing with those shapes, that is going to suffer. It is also going to suffer from much more leakage of information then needed if you are staymaning and then asking partner to show 3 card support as well.

 

I'm not saying it is unplayable, because obviously a fair number of people - including some very good pairs - play it. But I think it has definite losses to transfers on some hands (and wins on others, mostly the signoff ones, although I think the case is overblown).

To make it clear "transfers over notrump" is a good method as is 2-way Stayman. Both give up a natural non forcing 2♦ bid to increase the number of sequences to describe more hands.

Any reasonable comparison will come to the conclusion that transfer methods have an edge the stronger the notrump opening is.

Right-siding contracts, but also because transfer methods might be slightly more suitable for bidding to higher level contracts. (responder describes, opener chooses)

On the other side 2-way Stayman has in my opinion clear advantages in part-score battles and one main motive for playing weak notrump is to gain an edge in this area when the points are equally balanced round the table and not infrequently even when your side is out-gunned.

It is a matter of frequencies.

Where the exact trade off is between the two methods I am not certain and I am pretty sure that at the margins it does not matter much what you play. Gain some, loose some.

But I am sure with ArtK78 that for mini notrump 2-way Stayman is superior, as much as I prefer transfers over strong notrumps. (I play them both depending on vulnerability)

 

Rainer Herrmann