Source: Aussie Youth Bridge Bulletin
Do you ever feel like you and your partner are just mingling around after an inverted minor auction of 1minor-2minor?
Bidding stoppers may be the simplest / most practical approach, but if you want to get the most out of Inverted Minors, you and your partner will have to invest in some form of gadgetry such as the example below.
When an auction starts off with 1minor-2minor where a minor suit fit has been found (and a major suit fit has been denied or is unlikely), the partnership’s priority should be to find out which game the deal should be played in (assuming game values are present) as both 3NT and 5m are in the picture.
The way to distinguish this is through the knowledge of the balanced/unbalanced nature of both hands. Knowing a shortage in partner’s hand can pay big dividends in knowing whether to stay out of 3NT or not.
For example, if opener has 
4 
AQ3 
Q875 
KT983 and responder has Q73 K87 AJ752, then you definitely do not want to stop in 3NT. If you were bidding stoppers, the auction might go 1-2-2Maybe you might choose to overbid opener’s hand with a 3 rebid, but sometimes you might get too high if responder has only a 10 count. Thus, when you have an unbalanced hand, it can also be beneficial to distinguish the range. Here is an example for the 1-2 auction:
| 1 |
2 |
10+, (4)5+ |
| 2 |
Any minimum (roughly 11-14) | |
| 2 |
Any GF (Probably denies a shortage) | |
| 2 No shortage |
||
| 2NT Diamond (Low) Shortage | ||
| 3 Heart (Middle) Shortage |
||
| 3 GF, Heart (Middle) Shortage |
||
| 3 GF, Spade (High) Shortage |
||
| 2 |
15+, GF, No shortage | |
| 2 |
15+, Diamond (Low) Shortage | |
| 2NT | 15+, Heart (Middle) Shortage | |
| 3 |
15+, Spade (High) Shortage | |
| 3+ |
Whatever you want. Voids? 6-5? | |
This structure can be used similarly for diamonds.
Can you see any resemblance in the above structure? If you look back at the article “Improving Jacoby 2NT”, the idea of the continuations is basically the same.
The backbone of this structure is to identify the weaknesses when a shortage exists in either hand. When both hands are balanced (i.e. with no shortages), you usually don’t need to worry about stoppers because the hand rates to play in 3NT anyway when both hands are balanced.