[awm]

Yesterday partner and I had the following auction (opponents opening):

1♠-X-Pass-2♥
Pass-2NT-Pass-???

Which continuations by advancer are forcing here?

If advancer bids 3-minor, what are the implications about relative length in hearts and the minor?

Obviously 3♠ would be forcing (regardless of what, if anything, else is forcing), but what hand type(s) would you expect for that call? What would doubler's responsibilities be there?

[jdonn]

Haven't thought about it much, but it seems like the cuebid would be 5 card major choice of games and everything else would be NF. Bidding a minor there would be 5+ with 4 hearts and rebidding hearts is 5+ bad hand.

[Apollo81]

I would bid a minor with 5-5 if my hand was very bad, and maybe also with 5-4 if the minor was relatively good and the hearts were xxxxx. I agree in principle that this is supposed to be 4-5. Otherwise I agree with Josh.

[jdonn]

5-5 is acceptable I guess but I don't think you can with 5-4, partner will pass with 3 hearts and 2 of the minor choosing the 7+ card fit over the 7 card fit from his perspective. Not to mention 3-3.

[awm]

A couple questions here...

Supposing you had a yarborough with a 5m and 4♥, what do you bid after 1♠-X-Pass? It seems like there is some benefit to bidding the minor, which is likely to be "safer" and also less likely to convince partner to push for game. But it seems from Josh and Noble's answers like they would always bid 2♥ in this situation?

Keeping in mind that 2nt here is something like 19-21, I'm not sure the idea of bidding 3m NF with a "good four-card minor and five bad hearts" makes all that much sense.. if 3m is NF then it should show a truly atrocious hand and probably no suit is really "good" right?

[jdonn]

3 counts are way more common than 0 counts, and if partner is going to force all the way to game opposite those when I bid 2♥ then I'm fine with that.

[FrancesHinden]

I play 3 of a new non-reverse suit forcing for a round, and a rebid of the first bid suit non-forcing, with a cue game forcing.

This is rather biased against matchpoints, but the idea is that while it might be slightly more likely that advancer wants to run from 2NT on a very weak hand, it's overall more useful to be able to get to the right game when responder has something useful in a distributional hand.

[bluecalm]

I like the way Frances described.
My first instinct was 3m = NF but I've changed my mind.

[JLOGIC]

Yeah a new suit is forcing to me. 3S is choice of games.