Roman 2 bids and ZAR

I had the following hand/auction last night.

Dealer: West Vul: EW Scoring: IMP

♠ J7 ♥ QJT92 ♦ Q986 ♣ K9 ♠ K6 ♥ 875 ♦ A7543 ♣ 875 ♠ Q983 ♥ K64 ♦ KJT ♣ Q62 ♠ AT542 ♥ A3 ♦ 2 ♣ AJT43

West North East South

Pass Pass Pass 1♠
Pass 1NT! Pass 3♣!
Pass 3NT Pass Pass
Pass

My partner and I play Inquiry 2/1 with an opening bid of 2H or 2S showing 5+Spades, and 4+ clubs and a minimum "opening" hand. The definition of what is a minimum opening hand is altered a tiny bit because we open hands with SPADES with 25 ZAR points. A hand with 54 pattern starts off with a minimum of 12 ZAR points (5422) and if you are 55 the mininimu is 14. When you add to the mix that controls count towards the point total, with 55 you could open some hands with an ace, king and Jack.

The upper end of the Roman 2 bid is around 15 hcp. This will always be a 5422 hand with 15 hcp. This total 15 hcp + 12 = 27 ZAR already without counting control points. I have sort of fixed in my mind that the opening bid should show (25)26-31 ZAR points. This isn't based upon much more than my feeling that 32 ZAR is too many to bid like this.

Which brings me back to the hand last night. Three aces, 5-5 pattern, great clubs, and 33 ZAR points. Too good for 1S in my opinion We could miss some great games or slams as there will be no way to catch up. Add to this with 5-5 I have protection in that I didn't open with MisIry, so I upgraded this 13 hcp hand to be "better than a minimum" and blasted away.

I am not sure how much this "lower limit" jumpshift should be pushed. Henri was kibitzing when I used this toy and he thought this was way too aggressive. This was "a perfect hand" for 2S. I wonder. Maybe i need to expand the ZAR point range for 2S. Of course, 3NT made, and 4S is cold opposite this VERY HORRIBLE hand for partner on this auction, so that sort of is a justification for my evaluation, of sorts. The fact that 4[sp] makes with 4-2 spade split and missing KQ986x and my JACK was dead is interesting from a ZAR persepective.