Thank you for all the kind responses. After reading them, I realize that the real question here is down to how good you feel the north hand is. Some take positive views and think passing 3C is impossible, some are more negative about it and think even the 2
♠ bid is too much of a stretch. Indeed how good is that 14 count opposite a minimum responder?
Well, I was the north player as you might have guessed. Several bids came to me after seeing the 1NT response, 2
♣, 2
♠, 3
♣, 3NT. 2
♣ is an underbid. My partner is marked with 3 or 4 clubs, which means I can easily gather 8 tricks so 3NT is very nice. The next question is, should I take the chances and blast into 3NT and hope partner give me
♥A/
♥K, or should I bid it slowly? Opponents have 9+ hearts, so I'd expect a heart lead anyway, so 3NT is out. Between 2
♠ and 3
♣ I found 3C not clear-cut, also not a strong enough invitation. Therefore I bid 2
♠, hoping partner will find a natural response of 2NT. As you can see 3NT is a much superior contract.
Of course there came the misunderstanding later in that 3C bid. But from my point of view, my parnter has denied a heart stop, which makes 5C feasible even he held a dead minimum, say SQ + DK/DA. Denying the heart stopper made those points the very possibility. Moreover, he could bid 3
♣ on an 8P aceless hand, say SQ DKJ HJ CJ. Of course you can argue that he could have DQJ instead of a K and CQ instead of SQ, but I took the more positive view and were happy to give it a try. By the way my partner has a reputation of slow player and I barely noticed his hesitation. When faced with a slightly abnormal bid, 8-10s thinking was "in-tempo" of him.
Help
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