This is the easy one! With no major suit prospects and no long minor (6+) you have a balanced hand opposite a balanced hand so it’s just a question of doing the sums.

With a weak hand you know you don’t have enough for game so you can just pass and leave partner to play in 1NT, assuming your pesky opponents don’t interfere. With a good 8 or any 9 HCP you will want to be in game if partner doesn’t have the minimum 15, so you can give them that information by bidding 2NT and let them choose to pass or bid game. With 10+ HCP you know you have enough for game so just bid it.

One more thing, though….suppose you have a really strong hand as well? With two balanced hands you need 33+ HCP to make 6NT. So if you have this kind of balanced hand with no major suit interest and you have 18 HCP you can see enough for slam, so you can just bid 6NT.  Happy days.  But what if you have 16 or 17? Then it’s just like having a hand that’s invitational to game – you want to be in the high reward contract if partner is non-minimum.  So in this case, you can invite partner to bid slam if they have 16 or 17  by bidding 4NT.  Clever, eh?  This is called a quantitative bid and we will meet it again.