Daniels Law

I was on BBO the other day and there was a viewgraph on and I decided to watch for a while. I can't remember the name of the tournament that was being played, I think it was the Norwegian Premier League or similar. I only watched 10 boards before one of my pet peeves came up, here's the hand:

Vul: Nil Dealer: West	♠ J 7 2 ♥ J 9 7 ♦ J 9 ♣ K Q J 8 7
♠ K T 6 5 3 ♥ K 6 5 ♦ T 8 6 3 ♣ 9		♠ A Q ♥ Q 3 ♦ A K Q 7 4 2 ♣ A 6 2
	♠ 9 8 4 ♥ A T 8 4 2 ♦ 5 ♣ T 5 4 3

At both tables the EW pairs played in 3NT and made all 13 tricks on heart leads. To say that 6D is a safe contract is an understatement. Short of 6-0 spades or 7-1 hearts nothing can go wrong; so how did they get to 3NT? Well East showed 20-22 balanced at both tables.

Daniels rule goes like this: "Balanced hands do not contain AKQxxx".

Ok so you might own up to having some cards in the other suits after you've shown the AKQxxx at least once. I'm not saying that 3NT or 6NT might not be the right contract to aim for but if you open the East hand 2NT then you're going to miss 6D. All the time.

If anyone has their own examples or counter examples I'd be interested to see them.

Also I've changed the layout since last post. Better? Worse?