Over 1NT, some people bid two diamonds to say they have five hearts, and two hearts to say they have five spades. The 1NT person bids the desired suit, completing the transfer.
Apparently the idea is to "hide" the (stronger) 1NT hand. Except for one thing. As a defender I already have a pretty good idea of the 1NT hand; balanced distribution probably one or more honors in every suit. A defender might actually be more interested in seeing the "five trump" hand, particularly if is highly distributional (singletons and voids, instead of high card points). The "no trumper" has three trumps, on average.
Can the advantages of transfer bids possibly outweigh the disadvantages? Put another way, why is it more important to hide the high cards than the five trumps?
