Posted 2013-October-03, 18:22
It's not a random 4 count. It's got an ace, doubleton, support and two tens, it's pretty normal to bid on these sort of things. A fair number of good players believe it's mandatory to respond with an ace. If partner has a hand worthy of jump-shifting, game probably has good chances as it does here. Balanced 19 should typically just raise 1nt to 2nt, which will be passed, it's true this is less desirable than playing 1 heart, but you have to balance these losses vs. making games. Also the vast majority of the time you get back to 2H after a preference, this is hard to balance against, and if 2H goes down one it's likely the opps were going to balance against 1H anyway.
More debatable is the use of 1nt as weak raise tactic when a passed hand, perhaps a raise to 2H is better, but I don't know consensus on this.
The "six points to respond" thing is something taught to beginners that keeps them out of trouble to some extent, but as you get better you need to learn where to push the boundaries. Also it's "six points", not "six high card points", and this responding hand should evaluate to 5.x something, so close enough.
If the hand were a Q and two jacks then I'd be more with your position.