Please delete if OT

[henry...@yahoo.com]

Adam, if this is OT please feel free to delete it.

David's reference to the Balanced Hand principle in the Women's Trials
thread leads me to ask this question, but it depends on using a 1M 2nt
response as a forcing raise, so I realize that it might be off topic.

One standard way of responding to the 2nt forcing raise is for a rebid
of new suits on the 3-level to show singletons, and to rebid 3M, 3nt,
and 4M to show various kinds of hands without shortness.

That seems to me to be very wrong under what I will call the "suits of
interest" principle.

Once opener has indicated that he holds a singleton in his hand, that
suit will most frequently be eliminated as a suit of interest. In
reality, if responder has AKJx in that suit and responder has a
singleton queen, responder could be very interested in that, but most
partnerships will not have the tools to discover that.

By the same token, if opener has no shortness, then there are
potentially three side suits that responder could be interested in.
Here, of course, control by shortness is no longer an issue, so any
control showing bid would be based on an honor.

So it seems to me that a method that recognizes that having more suits
of interest requires more bidding space would reserve the 3c rebid to
deny shortness and to use 3D/3OM/3M to show opener's shortnesses,
either using coded rebids (3d = clubs, 3h = diamonds, 3s = OM) or
using natural rebids (3d = diamonds, 3M = clubs, 3OM = other major).
Then, the partnership has maximum space where space is needed (when
opener has no shortness) and loses space where space is needed less
(when opener has shortness and responder will only care about two
suits at most).

Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are requested (if Adam keeps the
thread here rofl).

Henrysun909