1NT with 4-4 majors

[pescetom]

For garbage to win over transfer and pass you usually need to find partner with a doubleton in your 5-card suit as well as 4(+) in the other major, since 5-3 fits with a 4-4 side suit tend to play better at the 2-level than the converse when the long hand is weak (and 5-2 tends to do better than 4-3). The basic idea being that you might lose the lead multiple times, so the extra length helps you maintain trump control.

 

Even then, if you play crawling (instead of garbage) you will often land in a 4-3 Moysian even with a 5-2 fit available. If you play garbage you need to assign two bidding sequences - 1NT-2♣; 2♦-2♥/2♠ - to weak hands. The more I look at it the more sense I think it makes to just transfer to the longer major and be done with it.

 

When I switched my main partnership to a pure Puppet Stayman 3 years ago, one of my main fears was giving up Crawling.

It turned out to be a total non-issue: it's relatively infrequent (far less so than lucrative benefits such as being able to stop in 2♦) and as DavidKok argues "just transfer and pass" seems to work at least equally well, compensating the slightly more probable misfit with less information leakage about declarer's hand, plus avoidance of possible wrongsiding in hearts.

[nullve]

I see no Law protection beyond 2M with a 4-4 fit.

3M is Law protected with

 

4423 (4432) opposite 4441 (4414): 17 total trumps

4423 (4432) opposite 4450 (4405): 18 total trumps

 

and even

 

4423 (4432) opposite 4423 (4432): 17 total trumps

 

but not with

 

4423 (4432) opposite 4432 (4423): 16 total trumps

 

.

 

There is of course no guarantee that total trumps = total tricks on particular deals.

[tazbierek]

1 NT opening

 

partner bids 2C stayman

 

With 4-4 in hearts and spades

which one do you bid first

 

and

 

WHY

 

I always bid H because partner can easy show us spade bidding 2NT or 3NT.Also we dont play garbage stayman so after 2C we showing if we have max hand or weak hand (15-17) . lets say 1NT-2C-2H ( 2h is 4-5 hearts) but just 15 points so if partner have invitation hand we know we dont belong to game