[TWO4BRIDGE]

♦

rhm, on 2012-January-20, 04:56, said:

I prefer minorwood.

To start control showing bids above 4 of the agreed suit is inefficient and kickback is too complicated for simple souls like me.
With 4♣ agreeing ♣ and asking for key-cards there would have been no disaster.
Note, that minorwood makes 4NT a possible resting place, always welcome when you want to invite a minor suit slam after 3NT has been bid by your partner.

I agree with North's bidding, except that I would have bid 4NT if natural instead of 5♣.
I think South did too much. He had bid strongly before with lots of secondary honors and should have passed 5♣.

Rainer Herrmann

Kickback will also make 4NT as a final resting place.
Since suit agreement is first shown at the 4-level ( a non-jump ), then 4D! becomes Kickback.
( If ♣ suit agreement were at the 3-level, then 4C! would be RKC-ask ( Minorwood ).

Because of his 2 small Diam, South decides to use RKC to go to slam ONLY if their side has all the keycards ;
South..........North
1C - (1S) - 2H (10+ with 5+ diamonds) - (2S)
3NT - 4C
4D! - 4NT ( 3rd step = 2 - ♣Q )
pass

However, as has been mentioned, this is "masterminding" ( or resulting ) since if North has 2 Aces ( one of which is the ♦ AND the ♦K, then 6C is a lock .

[rhm]

FrancesHinden, on 2012-January-20, 15:52, said:

I don't see the merit, or indeed the benefit, of playing 4♣ as minorwood, not least because keycards weren't the issue. It seems that rhm is only prepared to play in slam with no keycards missing.

A little understood but important enhancement, because it occurs very frequently, to key card asking is to play that if the key card asker has shown a primary side suit outside of trumps, this suit should be a second key card suit.
The king (but not the queen) of this side suit, in this case the ♦K, becomes a sixth key card. This is entirely logical. So 4♣ for me would be minorwood, and since North does the asking, both minors suits are key suits.
If you can not see the merit of a key card ask to avoid bidding slam, missing 2 key cards like here, I am lost. I do see the merit.
I am not claiming key card ask solves all problems in slam bidding, but neither does control bidding. I am not against control bidding, but when you run out of space, I believe key card ask solves more problems than control bidding.
The trouble with control bidding is, that you can always end up at the right level, but only in the postmortem. The actual table results look differently. Too much scope for misjudgment.

TWO4BRIDGE, on 2012-January-20, 18:08, said:

...
However, as has been mentioned, this is "masterminding" ( or resulting ) since if North has 2 Aces ( one of which is the ♦ AND the ♦K, then 6C is a lock .

This is only correct if South asks for key cards. South would show in response to minorwood 3 key cards, holding ♣K, the ♦K and the ♥A. The actual response of 4NT would indicate that 2 keycards are missing.

Rainer Herrmann

[DeadLock79]

Its so funny everybody is discussing biding over 4♣ when 4♣ is just so wrong.
And you know why ..bec everybody see S hand with KQxxxx and think 4♣ is safe.At what point pd shows 6♣? 1♣? 3nt ?
Imagine now you dont see S hand and think pd has som like
♠KQJ
♥AKQJ
♦xx
♣Qxxx

♠KQJ
♥AKxx
♦KQ
♣109xx

Would you bid 4♣ now ?
Even 5♣ is not safe..
This reminds me of Vug commentors who are inventing bids only bec they fit to all 4 hands they see.

[rhm]

DeadLock79, on 2012-January-21, 07:05, said:

Its so funny everybody is discussing biding over 4♣ when 4♣ is just so wrong.
And you know why ..bec everybody see S hand with KQxxxx and think 4♣ is safe.At what point pd shows 6♣? 1♣? 3nt ?
Imagine now you dont see S hand and think pd has som like
♠KQJ
♥AKQJ
♦xx
♣Qxxx

♠KQJ
♥AKx
♦KQ
♣109xx

Would you bid 4♣ now ?
Even 5♣ is not safe..
This reminds me of Vug commentors who are inventing bids only bec they fit to all 4 hands they see.

With the first hand I would never open 1♣, which I consider an abomination with this hand, but 1♥. And yes I play 5 card majors, but I am also playing Bridge.
I do not mind ending in a 4-3 ♥ fit, should partner be short in one of the minors. Even a 4-2 ♥ fit could easily be the only game in town here, not that I actively look for 4-2 fits.
The second hand is more reasonable and yes I would stop in 4NT.
4♣ is quite safe provided you can stop in 4NT. 100% safety does usually not exist in Bridge bidding, which is a game of incomplete information.

Rainer Herrmann

[gnasher]

DeadLock79, on 2012-January-21, 07:05, said:

Its so funny everybody is discussing biding over 4♣ when 4♣ is just so wrong.
And you know why ..bec everybody see S hand with KQxxxx and think 4♣ is safe.At what point pd shows 6♣? 1♣? 3nt ?
Imagine now you dont see S hand and think pd has som like
♠KQJ
♥AKQJ
♦xx
♣Qxxx

♠KQJ
♥AKx
♦KQ
♣109xx

Would you bid 4♣ now ?
Even 5♣ is not safe..
This reminds me of Vug commentors who are inventing bids only bec they fit to all 4 hands they see.

On the first one, I think opener should sign off in 4NT over 4♣. He may have an 18-count, but it's nearly all in the wrong place. The minor honours in the majors are known to be useless, and ♥K is far less valuable than ♦K would be.

Your second example is a card short.

[DeadLock79]

The more you ask the more you find out ..
I mean you should start a topic with "how many of you play bridge and open 1♥ in 1st with ♠KQJ ♥AKQJ ♦xx ♣Qxxx playing 5M system?".
As about second Im not sure you have the skill to stop in a 4nt seeing how fast you are reaching an awfull 6♣ overbidding 2 times (1.4♣ 2.pass to 4♥x)

I suspect with ♠xx ♥x ♦AKxxxx ♣AJxx you bid the same ? Bec it looks you are missing that K♦.
But ♠KQJ ♥AKQJ ♦xx ♣Qxxx to open 1♥ in 1st postion in a 5M based system you call it bridge ?
I suspect that if you start a pool you ll find out you are quite unique.

[gnasher]

Deadlock, with your second example (which now has 13 cards), I think opener also should probably sign off in 4NT. Knowing that we're missing ♠A, opener needs to find ♦A and ♣AKQ opposite, which is quite a lot to hope for.

However, I can see that this hand might cue-bid, and now (depending on your methods) it might be impossible to stop in 4NT. So we'd reach 5♣, needing the overcaller to have at least one club honour. That is, we'd go down if he has ♠A10xxx, ♥Q and nothing else. That's not such a high risk.

I agree that this isn't ideal, but it's not that bad. The opponents have stolen more than one level of bidding from us - responder ended up bidding 2♥ instead of 1♦. I think it's worth a small risk of getting too high in order to reach a good slam opposite something like AQ Kxxx Kx KQxxx or AQx Axxx x KQxxx.

[benlessard]

also these hands are starting to looks like penalty double at equal vulnerability. Partner will not have 4H very often (if he does hes GF) and unless you keep the X for exactly 6C and 2D the X is probably penalty-ish in many partnership.

[kfay]

South didn't appreciate the fact that all his strength lied outside the partnership's suits. Gotta like the 6th club, but ♠KQJ is pretty worthless.

[han]

I was south. I thought that 3NT didn't show nearly as strong a hand as this (I would bid it with a king less) and that partner's bidding suggested a 2-2-5-4 shape. Given that I could see he had no honors except possibly the heart jack in the majors, I thought that there was a good chance that he held AK A in the minors, in which case I would want to be in slam. I don't think that xx xx AQxxx Axxx is enough for north to make a slam try, and even then it is on little more than a finesse (admittedly, it sounds like the finesse would likely be off).

In short, I agreed with gnasher's first post and was a little surprised that the rest thought that south has already shown this strong a hand or that north showed less than xx xx AKxxx Axxx.

[benlessard]

Agree 100% with Han here if partner failed to show the stiff H or S he must have xx,xx,AKxxx,Axxx wich make slam excellent. Passing the X of 4H is costly like any slam sequence where you make the wrong cuebid. Hopefully your agreemements over double of a cue are fixed and you wont get those problems again.

[JLOGIC]

han, on 2012-January-20, 09:13, said:

KQx
Ax
Kx
KQxxxx

Not a chance south can hold this come on.

North was insane.

[han]

JLOGIC, on 2012-January-24, 07:25, said:

North was insane.

Ha, thanks for waiting until you were sure I wasn't north!