An important point about Bridge World Standard, the bot write-up, and Joe's write-up is that they are not in complete agreement. That's no surprise of course but worth noting.
The simple auction 1NT - 2
- 2
- 2
will illustrate my point.
BWS treats this as weak with both majors.
The bots treat this as as invitational strength with 5 hearts and 4 spades
Joe says invit, but notes that he thinks weak is better.
All three treat 1NT - 2
- 2
- 2
as invitational.
There are other cases where the split is more dramatic. 1m - 2M, whatsit? Many on BBO would say a weak jump shift. The bots treat it as a Soloway jump shift (strong, with specific rules about follow-up). BWS? "A jump-shift to the two-level is limited with majors if two of a major (five-plus spades, four-plus hearts, game-invitational if two spades, weaker than game-invitational if two hearts)".
How about after a 2
opening? BWS plays 2
as waiting (that is also my preference). I could not find 2
- 2
in the Gib write-up (the write-up is definitely incomplete) but I can tell you from experience that the bots treat it as waiting. Joe treats it as showing at least a K. DaveG uses this "at least a K" approach and in one of his lessons he noted the following. 2
- 2
- 2NT should now be forcing. Opener has a big hand, responder has at least a K, so treat 2NT as forcing. Since I prefer a waiting 2
I had never given that any thought, but it makes sense. It has consequences. (This is now me, don't blame Dave) For example, the auction 2
- 2
- 2NT - 3NT - 4NT is now a possibility. Since 2NT is forcing, opener is in no danger of being passed. Responder raises 2NT to 3NT and opener, with a truly huge NT hand, invites 6 by bidding 4NT. How huge is "truly huge"? Those who play 2
as a positive response might want to discuss that. Assuming that they agree with Dave that 2
- 2
- 2NT is unconditionally forcing.
Anyway, there are a variety of ways of playing some pretty basic sequences. This who think that whatever way they play a sequence is "standard" should re-think that view. I learned bridge by reading Goren. Everyone played Goren. The world has moved on since then. Good or bad, it has moved on.