1S:1N any strength relay

[Zelandakh]

Cheers Zel. One question - why are so many hands bidding 1S:1N, 2C?

Because over 2♣ we can afford to use 2♦ as the relay (our only diamond hand is invitational so bumping that to 3♦ is not a problem). But over 2♦♥♠ we need all the low level bids naturally so including more than 1 or 2 hand types prevents us from unwinding them. Add to that the advantage that Responder can pass 2♣ with a very weak hand and long clubs and it seems clear that this is the right basic approach (although we can argue about which hands to remove). I actually started by putting ALL non-GF hands into 2♣, saw how that went and then removed the most troublesome into 2♦♥♠ to make the partial relays resolve under 3NT (except for 6♠4m with extras where it is unnecessary). If you were able to take one more hand type out of 1NT then we can really get serious with relays by having a low level forcing call in every sequence.