I came late to the party so I know both hands
KQJ832------KQJ832
void--------432
QJ84--------A2
AQ6---------A2
two opening hands roughly equivalent in HCP
you open both 1s and lho bids 2c and your p x then pass
to you what do you do next? the hand on the left seems
to have a ton of potential while the one on the right
seems much more pedestrian. One might be tempted to
bid 3s with left hand and a more conservative 2s with
the right hand and both would be wrong because p hand
is xx AKJx xxx xxxx and 3s is too high with left hand and
2s too small with right hand. Point is opps have 9
hearts and p manages to have 100% of their minimum tox
in your void. This wont happen often so dont let a small
% probability hand negatively influence your future thinking.
If this were IMPS I would bid 3d (because I do not fear 5d like
I do at MP)
At MP I am torn between 3s and 3c and would probably lean
toward 3s since I am not crazy about club Q (though it will
almost surely make defending the hand tougher) switch my hand to
KQJ832 void AJ84 A32 and I would bid 3c.
As an aside if playing SAYC and p bid 2h I would now have a tendency
to become more conservative because p heart length and concentration
of values swings much more toward being in hearts than it does after
a neg x (with opps maybe holding 9 hearts)
)))