Thanks a lot to all who have replied so far. Well then, this is the full board:
According to the official system description 3
♣ shows 8 - 10 (11) points with 4 cards in
♣, so this is probably the system bid. With less points (that is, if you find a reason to downgrade the hand by half a point) you may pass. Alternatively, 2
♥ shows 2 cards in
♥ at 6 - 10 (11) points, which sounds good so far, but it is a 'correction bid' suggesting no good fit in the
♣ suit. (There is no artificial 2
♠ bid to show
♣ in this system.)
Anyway, at the table I found a number of reasons for bidding 2
♥: It shows the strength of the hand well while 3
♣ or pass are borderline in strength; it "keeps the bidding open" while staying on the 2 level; and you want to play the majors in matchpoints. So I bid 2
♥.
The distribution is not nice for EW. Double dummy analysis shows that the following contracts can be made (with open cards):
1
♥ from EW
1NT from EW
2
♣ from EW
1
♠ from NS
So basically everything beyond 2
♣ is down. In practice it's worse because the
♥ suit plays horribly, particularly after
♦7 lead, and it is difficult to restrict it to 2
♥-1. Partner has a pretty strong 15 HCP hand, so if you bid 3
♣ he may try to lift you in 3NT. Actually nobody in the room played the
♣ suit! But some scored positive at EW by letting NS play 2
♠ which works for EW because opps have just a 7-card fit and few points. Only two out of 13 players won their contracts, W2
♥= and S2
♠= with some help from the respective opps.
Anyway, after seeing this I thought I should rather pass 2
♣, but certainly I am biased from the experience of this particular hand.
Now this brings up my second top-level question: How about West pass the 1NT bid?
I mean, clearly the system rebid is 2
♣. We are supposed to show the 4-card suit and who knows, we may find a wonderful 6-4 fit. (Why not dream?) But on less wonderful days we may want to play NT anyway; and the 2
♣ bid can create a lot of trouble, as we have seen, because it is so inspecific in strength. There is no fit in
♥ or
♠. The shape of the West hand is, well, just okay to me, so NT looks good. 1NT scores as much as 2
♣ in MPs and 1NT+1 score more than 2
♥= in a 5-2 fit or more than 3
♣=. Finally, opps do not intervene over 1NT as easily as they do over 2
♣. True, we may want to be in 3NT if partner has 10 HCP but there is no way to find out 'maximum of maximum' in our system. So, why not pass the non-forcing 1NT bid?
If you don't, would you pass 1NT with
♣x instead of
♣Q? Would you pass 1NT in IMPs instead of MPs?