[bluecalm]

Smolen is notoriously difficult to handle when it comes to slam bidding.
There is a convention which helps with that a lot (and with 5-5 shape as welL):
1N 2C
2D 3D = asking for 3 card majors

If you feel like doing something fancy you can also play that 4C is both majors very good hand (in the context) and 4D or 4H is a weak hand. This has advantage of finding about 3-2/3-3 shape in majors which is important for slams and disadvantage of losing some cuebids after high response.

This way you have more room for investigating, you avoid 3N with 2245 opposite 5-5 in majors but you lose natural 3D which isn't really a problem as you can easily pack all that is needed in 3C and now free 3H/3S.

[JLOGIC]

Stephen Tu, on 2014-March-17, 18:34, said:

Guess any one of these type of things isn't likely to affect our long term average and it's not like our opps bid the grand so it didn't end up mattering too much.

Yeah for sure, on this hand those methods would have missed grand also. It doesn't really matter, more important is to always be on the same page and have some guesswork than to guess what page you are on all the time.