May bidding contest: the results!

Should you treat these four small spades with contempt as the majority of the experts thought? Pacault, Lévy, Harari, Thuillez, Jill Meyers, Duguet and Toffier: “3♦. Closer to the cards; the clubs might provide spade discards and we can follow up with 4♠ over 3NT.”

Tignel summarises all of that for us: “3♦. The jump shift to 2♠ is horrible: on one hand, it does not guarantee four cards in Spades (but five are possible!); on the other hand, Responder is supposed to show a fit with 3♠, no matter his strength (to leave room for Opener to bid 3NT if he does not have four cards). Faced with these concerns, I prefer bidding a self-sufficient six-card suit to showing an uncertain fit with mediocre suit quality. That said, even if I were sure of the spade fit and even if 3♠ did show a slam try, I would choose the 3♦ bid regardless: playing in 6 Diamonds (even in a 6-1 fit) might potentially allow us to protect the King of Hearts on the lead and, most of all, to discard losing spades on the clubs when North does not have the top spades.”