You may have guessed from the Base Minus 2 page that I'm not always fond of conventional wisdom! Well back in the days when I played bridge, I preferred partners who would indulge my odd ball view of No Stayman!

What? Why? Well there are quite a few reasons actually. Stayman is one of the oldest bridge conventions played by everybody apart from mavericks like me. This means that it is largely played for historical and traditional reasons rather than because of on going re-evaluation by those who use it.

Before we go any further, let's just clarify, I'm old school Acol and as such use a weak 1NT throughout. Why is a separate issue! But that already has one major implication. Basically, 50% of the time your partner gets to speak first, and if that was to say Pass then, if your hand is 1NT why is your partnership looking to go anywhere else other than 1 or 2NT or 2 of a suit? In which case you need all four suits to be available. Hence Stayman completely prevents that. Therefore we can already see that for a significant number of hands, Stayman is a bad idea. Have I never heard of getting the weak hand to be dummy? Of course I have. But to do that the possibility of a minor 2 has already been sacrificed and by no means all of the major 2s will actually play worse with the strong hand in dummy. Hence on the majority of occasionans, where your combined hands come into that strength range, they are being compromised.

The point of bidding is to reach your optimum contract. Most of the time this will be a part score. So your partner has opened 1NT with 12-14 high card points, to be looking at game you need to be making that up to 25 points, but that won't happen 56.5% of the time if (s)he has 14 points, 65.4% with 13, 73.4% with 12. The numbers therefore backup what I was saying in the previous paragraph, Stayman relates to a minority situation.

Another way of looking at that is that most conventions, apart from the one club family which are a different kettle of fish, start at a higher level than Stayman, that is, at a point where having to use "get out tactics" is less likely to be a disaster because there is a backup of strength and/or distribution.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the text books, like any other text books, will only tell you about the glories of when what they are promoting works. Your partner has opened 1NT and there is a possible major suit game available, exactly how many times would you miss it without Stayman? Surely you will not inevitably miss it using more natural bidding, but the books give no indication of those percentages. Then again, what about when you've ended up in your much vaunted major suit game and proceed to get cut to shreds by a vicious cross ruff? Worse, you find 3NT would have made because there would be no cross ruff! No, the text books never tell you what percentage of times you are worse off than if you had not got to your precious major suit game.

But shouldn't you make every effort to get to game and preferably in a major suit? Yes, if one is available, but not at the expense of crucifying your more commonly needed options.

Should bidding be different depending on the type of bridge being played? For example, if you are playing plain Contract, your primary aim is to make two games before your opponents do so, whereas if you are playing say Duplicate your primary aim is to make a score on each individual hand which compares well with that acheived by all the other pairs who play the hand from your table position. That is a very different aim. Is that difference reflected in bidding systems or their text books? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any.

Let's consider Stayman in Duplicate. What happens if, because 2 clubs can't be a natural bid, you end up in 3 clubs? If you make it, no harm done, you will be placed alongside the natural 2 club bidder. If you don't make it, anyone who played in 2 clubs is going to be handed a clear top, other things being equal. So there is a situation where, without taking any undue risks, a pair can get a more or less guaranteed top just by using a natural 2 clubs. Compare that to getting to a major suit contract which has no such guaranteed outcome. Which option is better to have in your arsenal in a Duplicate competition? Quite.

So, in all the years I was an active player, did me and my partners ever miss Stayman? Nope, it never happened, but we were good enough (just!) to have spotted when it would or would not have made a benificial difference.