It seems to me that smart bidding achieves four key objectives. The first of these , as S. J. Simon succinctly points out, is to get into the best possible contract which is always likely to make, as opposed to reaching the best contract possible which has every chance of failing.
Top players have clearly mastered the art of parking themselves in 4H/S making, when pairs elsewhere in the room are ruefully chalking up 3NT tick. Yet when the same 10 tricks can be made in either no trumps or a major, the experts regularly weigh in 430 against their names. How do they do it ?
The second objective of smart bidding involves a player communicating with partner in such a way, that each is able to convey a complete and accurate picture of his/her hand. This enables them to know exactly what to do and where to go.
However, smart bidding has fully embraced a much darker objective. The goal here is to disrupt and undermine the opponents' space and/or opportunity to communicate information about their hands, restricting their ability to make the right decisions.
If one is to take this third objective on board, then fast arrival or barrage bids are often employed. Holding a poor hand with 3 diamonds and a shortage in one of the majors, it is compulsory to bid 5D, after hearing your partner's 3D pre-empt and a second seat pass. The opponent in the 4th seat will no doubt double, but he and his partner will be operating in the dark.
Even when players prefer to adopt slow approach bidding, which may risk giving vital information away to wise and wily opponents, the smart bidders will have a strategy to overcome this disadvantage. They simply devise a complex bidding system, packed full of artificial bids, enquiry responses and unheard of gadgets, where the alert card will be popping out left, right and centre. Attempts to understand the detailed long-winded answers serve only to confuse rather than explain. Bamboozled opponents will also be handicapped by having no suitable defences or counter-measures to use against these ultra-smart bids. In short they enter into bidding wars completely unarmed, foolishly hoping that their simple pea shooters to bring down armour-plated tanks. Indeed, it is my contention that really smart bidders have turned the art of bidding into a beautiful complex pattern of indecipherable codes .
The fourth objective is to fully exploit and utilise the opponents' bids to help perfect their own. For instance an ambiguous 1S response over partner's 1C might well be weak or strong, but if there is a 1H overcall, then 1S can be far more explicit and complete in its description. In fact the 1H overcall creates a raft of wonderful opportunities to describe one's hand to a tee, with just one single bid.
So having said all this, I genuinely believe that the art of smart bidding has been corrupted by smart arsed players who have taken bidding into the realms of bewildering complexity. This is why I love the idea of Professor Hu Chi Ku Chi's ultimate bridge, where each pair can swap over hands for a brief but informed look, prior to a quick-fire auction where only bid from each pair is permitted. ( For more details read article posted Nov. 5th 2010 )
Indeed, ultimate bridge is only for the purists who believe the art of smart bidding must be simple in its concept but sublime in its execution.
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