helene_t, on 2022-July-26, 02:31, said:
1♦ with this hand is clearly best - if it gets passed out it is not necessarily a bad thing (although it might be, of course). It isn't entirely unproblematic, though. If it goes
1♦-1♥
2♠
or
1♦-1♠
4♥ (or 3♥? which one is the splinter in your system?)
you have a stronger hand than you might have had (the lower limit for these rebids is a tad lower for most English club players compared to BBF expert standard) but you probably won't be able to show your extras as you already have shown a maximum and partner is now captain.
It becomes a bit more interesting if we make the hand a tad stronger and/or have length in both majors:
AKQx
AKx
AQxxx
x
With these kind of hands I think that the most practical approach is to accept that you won't be bidding them very effectively no matter what you do, and fortunately they don't come up too often.
The best solution is probably to bid
2♣-2♦
2♠-2NT
3♦
- we bid economically so not necessarily longest suit first. Another approach is to agree that
2♣-2♦
3♠
shows specifically four spades and longer diamonds.
Either way, even if 2♣ is not GF in itself, these sequences should be used only with GF hands. With a semi-GF and awkward shape, open at the 1-level. But you are allowed to force to game with less than game in your own hand - if your hand produces game opposite some 98% of hands which partner can have, forcing to game may have higher success rate than not doing so.
For some years, I played something like this: After 2
♣ - 2
♦ - ? , reserve some 2-level suit to show artificially "no 6-card suit, no 5-5, some defect for notrump."
With 6-card or 5-5, opener starts at the 3-level. As you see, this is incompatible with shading the forcing opening with the inflexible hand types.
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