[mlhampton]

We play our inverted minor raises to be 10+ hcp, and five of the minor suit. This hand came up recently. After partner's 1 diamond opener, and a pass, I have to bid with:
Ax
x
KQxxx
KQJxx

My question is, should I bid 2C (2 over 1 forcing), 2D (inverted minor raise), or 3H (a splinter bid)? I have heard the adages "show your game force when you can", and "show your partner a fit when you can". If I bid 2C, I show the game force, but it becomes difficult to ever get partner to see I have 5 diamonds. If I bid 2D, I show the fit, and something about my distribution, but don't confirm my strength. With a splinter (is this an accepted practice with inverted minors) it shows both, and shows further a very good description of my distribution. Your comments, advice is welcome!

[mikeh]

Imo, the hand is too powerful for a space consuming splinter. the right 8 count…the minor suit aces…make slam almost cold.

As for which is better…2C or 2D….much depends on your methods. Old fashioned, basic inverted minors, where opener shows stoppers, is extremely inefficient on hands where responder is both strong and distributional. A well designed method might work well.

However, in my experience 90% of NA bridge players play the simple method so I’d bid 2C.

In a perfect world we’d see 1D 2C 2D 3H and now we’re off to the races…we’ve shown good clubs, gf values, 4+ diamonds and the heart stiff. Even if he doesn’t rebid 2D, you’re going to raise diamonds next and you should plan on pulling 3N should he bid it.

[mw64ahw]

This hand is slam going from the start, so even if we get to 3N I'd be looking at 4♦ SI. In this situation inverted minors feels most appropriate.

Even a basic Blackwood could work with all suits controlled.

[Cyberyeti]

3♣ GF fit for us

[mw64ahw]

Cyberyeti, on 2026-January-15, 09:56, said:

3♣ GF fit for us

Would you pull a 3N response?

[Cyberyeti]

mw64ahw, on 2026-January-15, 10:01, said:

Would you pull a 3N response?

partner will basically never bid 3N over 3♣, but might later.

3♣ is actually GF fit or single suited rock crusher, so partner will take the low road to find out which

[awm]

I'd go with the splinter; I think the hand is good enough to take another shot over the likely 3NT rebid by partner.

Bidding 2♣ will often understate the diamond support and telling partner that "club honors are valuable" when the only club honor he can have is the ace won't really help him evaluate; I don't think your chances of an accurate stop in 3NT here are very good, and if you're bidding over 3NT anyway it seems like the direct splinter is more descriptive. The way most people play 2♦ (inverted) is focused on determining overall strength and stoppers for notrump (neither of which is really helpful here).

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2026-January-15, 08:12, said:

Imo, the hand is too powerful for a space consuming splinter. the right 8 count…the minor suit aces…make slam almost cold.

As for which is better…2C or 2D….much depends on your methods. Old fashioned, basic inverted minors, where opener shows stoppers, is extremely inefficient on hands where responder is both strong and distributional. A well designed method might work well.

However, in my experience 90% of NA bridge players play the simple method so I’d bid 2C.

In a perfect world we’d see 1D 2C 2D 3H and now we’re off to the races…we’ve shown good clubs, gf values, 4+ diamonds and the heart stiff. Even if he doesn’t rebid 2D, you’re going to raise diamonds next and you should plan on pulling 3N should he bid it.

No inverted minors over here and FWIW we get your perfect world start by system (but 1♦ was 4+ and we might not have 5 clubs).

[gszes]

KQJ KQJ xxxx xxx and xxx Axx Axxx Axx just these two 3343 minimum hands alone (in conjunction with ours) have 3n and 7d as the best places to play. This kind of range almost always means go SLOW and learn as much as possible before proceeding. If you are playing 2/1 starting with 2c is always the easiest because no matter how many clubs partner bids we can convert to diamonds or nt (I would hesitate to convert clubs to diamonds with a computer partner below the 7 level).

Once you begin with 2c and later show diamonds it demonstrates slam interest.
Immediately Support with support is much more important when in competition than it is in probable uncontested auctions.

[Huibertus]

mlhampton, on 2026-January-15, 08:02, said:

We play our inverted minor raises to be 10+ hcp, and five of the minor suit. This hand came up recently. After partner's 1 diamond opener, and a pass, I have to bid with:
Ax
x
KQxxx
KQJxx

My question is, should I bid 2C (2 over 1 forcing), 2D (inverted minor raise), or 3H (a splinter bid)? I have heard the adages "show your game force when you can", and "show your partner a fit when you can". If I bid 2C, I show the game force, but it becomes difficult to ever get partner to see I have 5 diamonds. If I bid 2D, I show the fit, and something about my distribution, but don't confirm my strength. With a splinter (is this an accepted practice with inverted minors) it shows both, and shows further a very good description of my distribution. Your comments, advice is welcome!

When deciding on what to do on a hand like this or similar hands, think about HOW to get the best result. You need to either inform partner or ask partner to inform you, and the question is which approach is most likely to get you to the best contract.

A splinter is a mechanism to ask partner "I am short in this suit, will that be good or bad for slam purposes?", you informing partner, partner taking the lead. That is NOT really helping here.

What you need here is to tell partner "I have a mega fit, a good 5 card side suit in clubs, now YOU partner need to inform ME of controls and numbers of keycards. So on this hand the bidding sequence needs to set a ♦ GF and show a good ♣ side suit. Mandating partner to start cueing. That'd be inverted minor raise and a 4♣ rebid in my book. Partner doesn't need much for 6, two minor suit aces and not too many ♣/♠ for his discards can be enough. 3 aces could be 7 in some cases, 3 aces and a King certainly will be 7.