[daveharty]

Playing 2/1, on this auction:

1S-(pass)-1NT-(2S)

are responder's options analogous to those over a direct seat Michaels bid, or are they altered by the initial failure to raise spades? I'm specifically wondering about this situation:

1S-(pass)-1NT-(2S)
dbl-(2NT)-3S

Responder intended the "free" 3S as showing a 3-card limit raise but opener thought it was merely competitive (maybe 7-9 points with Hx or something similar). Is it standard to use 3H as the limit raise here?

[FrancesHinden]

What did the double mean?
If it just showed good spades, then 3S is competitive.
If it showed a good hand, then 3S should show a limit raise, because with 7-9 HCP and Hx of spades we might want to defend.

[daveharty]

FrancesHinden, on 2011-December-05, 15:04, said:

What did the double mean?
If it just showed good spades, then 3S is competitive.
If it showed a good hand, then 3S should show a limit raise, because with 7-9 HCP and Hx of spades we might want to defend.

Judging from opener's hand it could have been either/both: AQJ9x x T9x AKJx.

[jallerton]

It depends what hand types bid 1NT. If you play 1♠-P-2♠ as "constructive" so that 1♠-P-1NT includes hands with 3-card support weaker than a raise to 2♠ as well as limit raises, then:

1♠-P-1NT-2♠-dbl(good hand)-2NT-3♠

sounds like the weak raise to 2♠. The limit raise hand can either jump to 4♠ or double 2NT.

[aguahombre]

Yep, before we can know what 3S should have shown, we need to know what the double of 2S showed. The OP did not ask what it should show, but here goes, anyway:

What is the one hand type most frequent on this auction for opener which he needs to show right now (over 2S) but cannot? Hmm, how about a minimum opening bid with 6 spades?

If the double meant "I wanted to rebid 2S, but it is insufficient", other problems would go away, and whatever responder does next would be more readable.

[daveharty]

aguahombre, on 2011-December-05, 17:45, said:

The OP did not ask what it should show

Maybe that should have been my question, since there seems to be some disagreement on what is optimal. I would have thought along the lines of what aguahombre suggests: that the double shows a hand that would have rebid 2S absent the cuebid. But FrancesHinden suggests either "good spades" or "good hand", and apparently opener agreed with one of these interpretations, if not both. There was no discussion, so 1S-2S was not "constructive" per se.