LEARNING CENTER

3. You show approximately 16-18 points and 6 hearts. You need partner to have a little extra for game, but not much. 

2. You are in a game forcing auction so there is no rush to jump. Jumping to 3 should show a solid suit, at least AKQJxx. Here, you should just bid 2 and wait to see what happens.

Pass. Partner's 3 jump should show a weak hand with four spades. If partner wanted to make an invitational bid, he would bid 3.

4. Partner's jump after a preempt shows a strong hand (16+) with a 6+ card suit. Since partner has a strong hand with 6+ spades, you should show a hand that's too good to simply raise. Start with 4.

7NT. Partner has 6 tricks, and you have 7. Why complicate things? You can use RKCB just to be sure that partner has AKQJxxx instead of something like KQJ10xxx. 

4NT. Partner's bid shows a big hand, about 19 in total points! You've got strength for game that you haven't told partner about. If partner doesn't have hearts controlled, that's partner's fault. I'm bidding 6 if we are missing 1 keycard and bidding 5NT if we're not missing anything to give partner a chance to go to 7. 

5. This is a weird one. First: partner's 4 bid is not weak. Just as before, there's no weak jump over opponent's preempt so partner should have something for 4. Next, the problem we face is obvious: we don't want to lose the first 2 heart tricks. Bidding 5 is a relatively modern invention that asks partner if he has control in the opponent's suit. With a second round control (a singleton or K) he should bid 6 and with a first round control he can cuebid. I'm not big on conventions, but it's useful to have this gadget if you think you can remember it.