[jillybean]

I am listening to Adam Parish's Leveling Up Podcast with Danny Miles.
Danny describes his treatment with Jason Feldman, the dutch 2♣ where after (1♦) 1♥ (pass) we don't know if partner has 7 or 17

They use 2♣* as the limit raise giving partner the room to describe the overcall.
2M minimum
2♦ 12-13

Simple, and easy to remember when 2♣ is never natural.

[pescetom]

--

[mikeh]

Danny and Jason are good players but this is most definitely not something I’d ever play. Strange though it may seem, I once held a good hand with long clubs in this auction.

More importantly, I think it poorly thought out and largely unnecessary.

I don’t know anyone who thinks that, after an overcall, the most important thing is to announce 12-13 hcp. Hcp are not exactly the most useful valuation tool. Shape, fit, location of honours etc are far more useful imo.

Plus why do we lose an occasionally useful natural 2C bid to ask overcaller about his hand strength…note, not his shape but his hcp? Why not do what, in my experience, most good pairs do….have advancer start by describing his hand?

Here’s my scheme after (1D) 1H (P)

1S. Natural, denies 3+ hearts, F1, but I’m ok playing it nf, overcaller can pass with a minimum and 2+ spades

1N constructive, usually two hearts

2C. One round force although I have no problem with playing it non-forcing, with overcaller expected to bid with a non minimum

2D. Either a constructive raise in hearts or better.

2H. Courtesy raise

2S. Fit jump, F1

2N….natural, usually around 12-13 hcp

3C. Fit jump, f1

3D. 4+ limit raise

3H. Mixed raise

Note the emphasis on describing rather than asking

[jillybean]

I feel like I'm taking on Goliath, your methods are obviously good and proven.
Assuming that we play michales/U2nt, after partner has made a simple overcall he has told us he has a single suit, we only need to listen to the subsequent auction to begin constructing the shape of his hand. With shape reasonably defined we also have some idea of fit.
This is a competitive auction, location of honours is important if either of us has a strong or distributional hand. If as advancer, we hold the strong hand we should already have a good idea of where partners honours are, if partner shows the strong hand, we can resolve location of honour with further bidding. 2♣ is space saving in the most delicate auction where overcaller has shown a minimum opening hand.
It appears that this susquent bidding is starting at the 3 level in some of your auctions.

2♦ now shows your 5+ clubs, constructive or better

[mike777]

"Thanks Kathryn! After (1♦)-1M-(P), 2♣ is the limit raise or better and the 2♦ cuebid shows 5+ clubs and constructive or better. Similarly in the auction 1m-(1♠), 2 of the other minor shows 5+ hearts and constructive+, while 2♥ is constructive+ with 5+ of the other minor. The Dutch are all about efficiency and having extra space!"

D.Miles

[mikeh]

mike777, on 2026-June-26, 17:42, said:

"Thanks Kathryn! After (1♦)-1M-(P), 2♣ is the limit raise or better and the 2♦ cuebid shows 5+ clubs and constructive or better. Similarly in the auction 1m-(1♠), 2 of the other minor shows 5+ hearts and constructive+, while 2♥ is constructive+ with 5+ of the other minor. The Dutch are all about efficiency and having extra space!"

D.Miles

Now that makes sense. I couldn’t believe that they’d ignore clubs. The switch principle isn’t as well known, nor as popular, as the transfer principle and I’m happy to see another example where it seems likely to make sense.

[DavidKok]

There are several ways of implementing schemes like this. This one is 'switch'. Meckwell played '2♣ is always the good raise' for some time. 'The cue is the good raise' is quite common, mikeh explained the method above (and is what I play). Transfer advances (also known as Rubens advances) are also somewhat popular, where the-bid-below-2-of-a-major is the good raise.

I think it's a fine method. All the above have slightly different tradeoffs between effectiveness and complexity. Let's zoom out a little bit and look at the auction (1♦)-1♥-(P)-?. I can now think of a number of hand types that I want to show cheaply as advancer:

• Heart fit, competitive/courtesy.
  
• Heart fit, constructive or stronger.
  
• Long spades, no heart fit.
  
• Long clubs, no heart fit.
  
• Balanced or semibalanced hand, no heart fit, no desire to introduce a new suit.
  
• Long diamonds, no heart fit.

We want to show these hand types (note the emphasis on showing, not asking - as mikeh also already pointed out). There is a magical threshold on this auction: 2♥. Anything we can show below that limit is safe, anything above that is risky, as 2♥ is likely a good contract should we find partner with a misfitting hand for our suggestion and wish to sign off. We're currently at 1♥, so we have 5 bids left up to and including 2♥ for these 6 hand types. The first compromise that we make, which most modern systems make, is to compress the balanced hands with the long diamonds hands on this auction. Let's do the same. Now what's left is allocating the five bids to the five hand types.

The method mikeh and I use is 'natural'. We use 1♠ to show spades, 2♣ to show clubs, 1NT to show the misfit (semi)balanced hand/long diamonds in a pinch, 2♥ to show the courtesy raise and 2♦ to show the constructive raise. My own methods differ ever so slightly from mikeh's list as my 2NT is also another raise, so that my 1NT is wider range, but that's a detail at best. This is easy to remember and fairly effective. However, the other three approaches I mentioned also have something going for it.

Rubens advances uses transfers. There are many different flavours, but let's pick an example and say that 1♠ shows a balanced hand, 1NT shows clubs, 2♣ shows spades, 2♦ shows a good raise and 2♥ shows a courtesy raise - certainly not everybody's pick, but bear with me for illustration. This permits making the transfer bids - 1♠, 1NT and 2♣ - both weak and strong, as advancer is guaranteed of another bid. The details are very important but let me just say this lets us dip into including some of the negative free bid range into these bids while also containing the entire forcing range. In return, we've wrongsided the balanced hand (we would like opener to be on lead) and we lost a lot of space if advancer holds spades, making it difficult to scramble to a playable strain (NT or clubs) if we don't find our major fit - this 2♣ should show 5(+)♠ while a cheap forcing natural 1♠ could be bid on 4.

Switch keeps the natural scheme but swaps 2♣ and 2♦ - more generally, '2 of the other minor is the good raise, 2 of their minor shows the other minor on (1m)-1M-(P)-?'. The argument is that, in our natural scheme, a forcing 2♣ advance not only commits our side to a fairly high level already, also it's more important to clarify the major suits anyway. Plus, some hands with clubs might choose to bid 1NT. Meanwhile there's value in not using the-bid-below-2-of-a-major as the good raise. Using at least two-bids-below-2-of-a-major as the good raise allows for an extra round of communication before deciding whether to explore further or sign off - in Dutch we call this 'tikkie terug', translating approximately to 'back-pass' (it's a football reference). The idea is that overcaller can sign off with a weak hand, proceed past 2M with sufficient extras, and make the spare intermediate bid with a hand that's in between. As mikeh also already pointed out, this is about hand evaluation rather than hcp range - I'm sure the hcp description is just for reference, and not an accurate explanation of what the bid means. Two more minor notes on this:

• If overcaller signs off, advancer may of course bid on anyway with a really nice hand. The 2♣ 'good raise' is only limited through inferences of the other hands - practically unlimited.
  
• The 'tikkie terug' deliberately does not convey a shape message. The idea is that, if we want to make a game try, we do not want to leak information that helps the defence. We may decide to explore at the 3-level with sophisticated methods, but the initial message has to be 'partner, I am somewhere in this twilight zone, please check your hand for generic extras'. Now there's also no bidding space to use something more sophisticated, but even if there were, I am not sure you'd want to use it.

One thing that's a bit surprising, and an obvious downside of 'switch', is that while it is relatively easy to remember it is not optimal. On the auction (1♣)-1♥-(P)-? I would not like to use 2♦ as the good raise and 2♣ as diamonds. Note that, if the opponents open 1♣, switch gives us a 2♣ bid showing diamonds - basically a Rubens transfer - which is nice. But I already mentioned I want the two-under-2M to be my raise, so why not use 2♣ as the raise here? The reason is likely system complexity. I'd like to draw some attention to Brink-Drijver's 2025 Bermuda Bowl CC, where they list the following (formatting by me):

Brink-Drijver CC said:

Light overcalls on 1 level

• (1♣)-1♠-(P)-?: 2♣=♥, 2♦=fit, 2♥=♦
  
• (1♦)-1♠-(P)-?: 2♣=♥, 2♦=fit, 2♥=♣
  
• (1♥)-1♠-(P)-?: 2♣=♦, 2♦=fit, 2♥=♣
  
• (1♣)-1♥-(P)-?: 2♣=fit, 2♦=♦
  
• (1♦)-1♥-(P)-?: 2♣=fit, 2♦=♣

Note how they consistently apply 'two-under-2M is the good raise', and insert transfers where possible and switch where necessary. This is, in my opinion, an improvement over switch but more difficult to memorise (and I would not be surprised to see this picked up by the Dutch team).

Lastly I mentioned Meckwell. I do not know how their method works, only that on Vugraph on an auction (1♦)-1M-(P)-2♣* the last bid was alerted as '2♣ is always a good raise of the major'. Unfortunately I don't remember which major was bid, and I do not know how much of this statement was said at the table versus how much was injected by the operator or subject to interpretation. At any rate I believe the idea of using 2♣ as the good raise, rather than the 2♦ cuebid, seriously predates the current usage. I think that, again, the idea was to free up space for sorting out the wide-ranging overcall below the safety level of 2M after the good raise, at the cost of having to put the minor suit somewhere else.

pescetom, on 2026-June-26, 15:15, said:

It may be Dutch, but somehow I doubt Davidkok would approve?

Sorry, I think these methods are pretty great. Especially the Brink-Drijver option, or custom versions of the Rubens advances. They are lots of work though.

[DavidKok]

mikeh, on 2026-June-26, 20:06, said:

Now that makes sense. I couldn’t believe that they’d ignore clubs. The switch principle isn’t as well known, nor as popular, as the transfer principle and I’m happy to see another example where it seems likely to make sense.

I myself dabbled a lot with transfer responses in competition. I ended up playing a complicated set, which we've discussed in detail in the past. Part of that toolkit included switch on the 1M-(2m)-? auctions, which is where I think the principle really has several advantages and limited downsides. It's interesting to see it also applied to advances.

[pescetom]

 DavidKok, on 2026-June-26, 23:19, said:

Sorry, I think these methods are pretty great. Especially the Brink-Drijver option, or custom versions of the Rubens advances. They are lots of work though.

Sure, and what you say makes perfect sense. I was reacting to the OP which did not make it at all clear that this was a switch where clubs were still in the picture.

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2026-June-27, 06:16, said:

Sure, and what you say makes perfect sense. I was reacting to the OP which did not make it at all clear that this was a switch where clubs were still in the picture.

Nothing in this game is simple and obviously "let's use our natural 2♣ bid to replace our cue bid raise" was not the end of the system.
At the time of posting that is all the information I had and it sounded rather exciting, I do want to preserve all possible bidding space.