What is Stayman in bridge?
Stayman is a bridge convention where responder bids two clubs after partner opens one notrump. The bid says nothing about clubs. It asks one question: do you hold a four-card major? Opener answers two diamonds with no major, two hearts with four hearts, or two spades with four spades. The goal is finding an eight-card 4-4 fit in hearts or spades.
Two clubs over one notrump. It is the first convention nearly everyone learns, it comes up three or four times in an evening, and it is where I see more wasted auctions than anywhere else in beginner bidding. The mechanics are rarely the problem. Players know the responses cold. What goes wrong is that the bid gets made on reflex, before anyone has asked whether the answer will change anything.
What the bid actually says
Partner opens one notrump. You hold four hearts and eleven points, so you bid two clubs. You are saying nothing whatsoever about clubs. You are asking a single question: do you hold a four-card major?
Opener replies from a short script. Two diamonds means no four-card major. Two hearts means four hearts. Two spades means four spades. Holding four of each, opener starts with two hearts, and you can still show spades afterwards. That is the entire convention. It fits on a napkin.
It works for one reason only, and that reason is agreement. Bid two clubs opposite a partner who has not agreed to play it and you will hear a raise to three clubs, or worse, a pass. A convention you half-remember is worse than no convention at all, which is the thread running through which conventions beginners actually need.
What responder bids after the answer
The reply is only half the auction, which is what people mean when they say bidding is a conversation, not a code. Here is the usual follow-up, assuming a standard 15 to 17 point notrump.
If opener shows your major, you raise. Three of the major invites game, four of the major bids it.
If opener shows the other major, or bids two diamonds, there is no fit to find. Bid two notrump with an invitational hand, around eight or nine points, and three notrump with enough for game. Opener sorts out the rest. Say you asked holding four spades and heard two hearts, then bid three notrump. Opener holding both majors knows you must have spades, since you asked for a major and did not raise hearts, and can correct to four spades.
The same question works one level higher. When partner opens two notrump, three clubs is Stayman, and the answers move up a level to match: three diamonds, three hearts, three spades.
What a 4-4 major fit actually buys you
Trump length is not the prize. Ruffing is.
In three notrump, a losing card in a side suit is just a loser. In four hearts on a 4-4 fit, that same card can be ruffed in whichever hand is short, and a trick that did not exist in notrump appears out of nowhere. Four trumps opposite four trumps also means neither hand is stuck being the one that cannot afford to ruff. You take the ruff on the short side and still hold enough length to pull the opponents' trumps afterwards.
That extra trick is genuinely worth chasing. It is the reason the convention exists.
The hand that should never have asked
Now the part that gets skipped. Ruffing value needs a short suit, and plenty of hands do not have one. If yours is 4-3-3-3, flat as the table it is resting on, there is nothing to ruff and nothing to gain. You find the 4-4 fit, you play four hearts, you win exactly the tricks you would have won in notrump, and you have quietly handed away a board.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Not vulnerable, three notrump making nine tricks scores 400 and four hearts making ten scores 420, so the major looks fine. But run both contracts on the same ten tricks: three notrump plus one is 430, four hearts is still 420. Ten points. At matchpoints those ten points are the whole board, and they go to every pair that never asked the question. Matchpoints reward precision in precisely this irritating way.
Which means the flat hand with a four-card major has a real decision on its hands, and "I have a major, so I bid Stayman" is not a decision. 3NT often beats four of a major, and the case is worth reading in full before you next reach for two clubs.
Two more times to leave it alone
When you are too weak to survive the answer. Stayman starts an auction, it does not end one. Hold six points with four spades, hear two diamonds, and where exactly are you? At the two level, on a hand that wanted to pass one notrump and go quietly. Ask only when you can live with all three replies.
When your major has five cards. Stayman is built for four-card fits. With five hearts, a transfer describes the hand in a single bid and leaves the notrump opener as declarer, so the opening lead comes up to the strong hand rather than through it. Different tool, better job.
Finding out whether you were right
All of this runs into one problem at a home table: you never learn which choice was correct.
You bid Stayman, you play four hearts, you take ten tricks, somebody says nice hand, and the board is over. Ten tricks in notrump would have scored more. Nobody at the table will mention it, because nobody at the table knows. The decision that cost you the board was invisible at the moment you made it and stayed invisible afterwards, which is a strange way to try to improve.
The only thing that settles it is seeing what other people did with the same twenty-six cards. That is the whole point of playing pre-dealt hands and scoring them properly, and it is what Bridge@Home is built around: your four players play the deal at your table, and afterwards you see the contracts and the results of everyone else who held those cards. When four pairs stopped in three notrump for 430 and you took 420 in hearts, the Stayman question stops being theory. You have your answer, in matchpoints, on that specific hand.
The takeaway
Stayman is not a habit. It is a question, and a question earns its place when the answer changes what you do next.
Four-card major with a short suit somewhere: ask. Four-card major on a completely flat hand already heading for game: stop and think, because notrump may well be your best contract already. Too weak to handle a two-diamond reply: pass one notrump and lose nothing at all.
Ask, then go find out whether asking paid.