A couple of unusual bidding problems with Buddy on Monday:

You're red, they're white.  LHO opens 2 Spades in 3rd.  Pard bids 3 Hearts.  Righty passes.  You bid 3NT.  Lefty passes.  Pard bids 4 Clubs.

What's 4 Clubs?

...

You're into the last round and playing against the most inexperienced pair in the field.  You figure a strong last round and you'll probably go home the winner.

Pard opens 1NT in 3rd seat and you have a 3-4-3-3 9 count.  Included in that 9 count are 2 Jack thirds (something like Jxx / KJxx / Jxx / Kxx.)  Playing 4 suit transfers (so you have to run through Stayman to invite) what do you do?  If you choose to bid Stayman, what if pard bids 2 Hearts?

The first hand Buddy and LHO both thought that 4 Clubs should be Gerber, reasoning that Buddy would have made a leaping Michaels bid with a Heart-Club 2 suiter.

That makes very little sense to me.  I'm a passed hand.  Buddy made a non-forcing 3 Heart call.  As far as he knows we have no fit.  I was under-the-gun when I bid 3NT and might have as little as an 8 count.  What hand can he have that now he wants to go slamming?  Surely 4 Clubs is natural, with a hand not strong enough to make a leaping Michaels bid originally. 

Disaster was narrowly averted and the opps ended in 4 Spades doubled for an average board.

The second hand I agonized over for a good 30 seconds.  Against the best pair in the field I might even pass and take my plus rather than give the defense a roadmap, but that seemed like too deep a position here.  I bid 2 Clubs.  Buddy bid 2 Hearts and I had another tough decision.

After another 60 seconds in the tank (we'd done poorly on the first 2 boards and I knew I needed to get this right) I decided that in spite of the 4-4 Heart fit with all those losers the most likely game was still NT.  I bid 2NT.  Buddy passed.

Down 1 was good for all the matchpoints (though it didn't feel that way at the time.)