[jillybean]

We are looking at adding Same Suit Keycard for the minors. If the minor has been agreed below 3N, SSKC will apply, above 3N we will use kickback.

I am having some trouble sorting out the sequences in competitive auctions;

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 4♦ ? SSKC or competitive raise?

If the above sequence is a competitive raise how does opener show slam interest?
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ looks like a probe for nt.

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ (P) 3N (P) 4♦ SSKC?
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ (P) 3N (P) 4♥ Kickback?

tyia

[mike777]

1) standard kickback on
2) all of this is very very difficult
3) I repeat all of std kicback on.

what is your question?

If i may add pard dont put me in a very difficult position...and you know it.

[rhm]

 jillybean, on 2012-October-04, 00:34, said:

We are looking at adding Same Suit Keycard for the minors. If the minor has been agreed below 3N, SSKC will apply, above 3N we will use kickback.

I am having some trouble sorting out the sequences in competitive auctions;

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 4♦ ? SSKC or competitive raise?
If the above sequence is a competitive raise how does opener show slam interest?
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ looks like a probe for nt.

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 4♦ is not competitive, since opponents did not bid after 3♦. Also most play 3♦ (new suit at the three-level by responder) as game forcing
But it is a good example why I do not like kickback.
No good reason why 4♦ should not be minorwood, which you seem to call SSKC.
The Kantar rules for using minorwood are too restrictive for my liking. It makes life difficult for very little gain. No wonder you are having troubles.
Play 4♣ or 4♦ as minorwood, unless you are clearly not in a game forcing sequence like when a bid is competitive.
(opponents have bid or doubled above 3♣ respectively 3♦ and "forced" you to this level)

Quote

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ (P) 3N (P) 4♦ SSKC?

Of course, simple and easy. The sequence is game forcing. Do not worry that some suggest a different use for 4♦.

Quote

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ (P) 3N (P) 4♥ Kickback?

No, an even better example why you should not play kickback, which gives lots of troubles even to experts. Opener is showing a good hand with a spade control and a self supporting heart suit.

tyia
Rainer Herrmann

[Zelandakh]

I tend to prefer to play SSKC (usually called Minorwood) only when the minor has been agree at the 3 level. You can get the benefits of both a slam try and Kickback by using 4m agreement as slam try or better. So after 1♥ - (2♠) - 3♦ - (P), 4♦ agrees diamonds with slam interest. Then Responder can bid 4♥ to decline the slam try and bids of 4♠ - 5♦ accept the slam try while showing key cards. After a 4♥ response, 4♠ would now be RKCB. 4♥ should not be Kickback here because it also makes sense for this to be natural offering a choice of games. Others might treat the sequence differently of course.

You can apply the same logic to the other auction: 1♥ - (2♠) - 3♦ - (P); 3♠ - (P) - 3NT - (P). Now bidding again over 3NT must surely agree diamonds and show that the 3♠ bid was a cue. So 4♣ is a cue, 4♦ is a slam try (without club control) and 4♥ is Kickback. Here it should be clear that 4♥ cannot be natural since with that hand partner would have started with 3♥.

[han]

 rhm, on 2012-October-04, 04:11, said:

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 4♦

[skip]

No good reason why 4♦ should not be minorwood, which you seem to call SSKC.

I misread your post, thinking that you wrote there was no good reason to play 4D as minorwood and I was going to completely agree. Really, there is no good reason, and there is an excellent reason why you should not play 4D as minorwood here. The reason is that you might want to raise diamonds unambiguously without asking for keycards.

If you play kickback (which btw I do not recommend in this forum) then at least you can raise diamonds with 4D AND ask for keycards by bidding 4H. Looks good to me.

[han]

By the way, one could argue that playing minorwood 4C should be used to raise diamonds without asking for keycards. Perhaps this is so, although when you hold clubs it is nice to be able to bid them. But even if you agree on that, we would still have no reason to raise if partner bid 3C instead of 3D.

Then perhaps you should bid 3H first, and then 4D? You lose a lot of definition if that is your only way to raise diamonds. With

I would bid

1S - (2H) - 3D - (p)
3S - 4C
4D

with a hand like

AQxxx
xxxx
Ax
Kx

What else? So how can you show honest diamond support with AQxxx xx AQxx xx without asking for keycards?

[fromageGB]

An interesting question. I am sure it can get very confusing if you play both minorwood and kickback. My rule is that there is only one sequence (GF 3 suiter) where 4m is minorwood and any other time 4m is a genuine raise or preference, usually inviting game or slam.
So 1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (p) 4♦ is a natural raise, and the meaning depends on the nature of 3♦. If 3♦ is a GF, then 4♦ suggests slam and leaves the decision to responder, but if 3♦ is simply a one round force, 4♦ to me suggests tolerance but no real game interest.
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (p) 4♥ is kickback, and
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (p) 3♠ (p) 3NT (p) 4♥ is genuine hearts.
This utilises the metarule that if an ambiguous bid is direct it is ace asking, and making that bid by a more involved sequence is natural. Because if your diamond fit and hand was that good that you were slamming, why mess around with a 3♠ probe?

So your sequence 1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (p) 3♠ (p) 3NT (p) 4♦ suggests to me a hand that is not sure whether the right contract should be 4NT or 5♦.

You may not like my rules, but you certainly need rules !

[trevahound]

 jillybean, on 2012-October-04, 00:34, said:

We are looking at adding Same Suit Keycard for the minors. If the minor has been agreed below 3N, SSKC will apply, above 3N we will use kickback.

I am having some trouble sorting out the sequences in competitive auctions;

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 4♦ ? SSKC or competitive raise?

If the above sequence is a competitive raise how does opener show slam interest?
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ looks like a probe for nt.

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ (P) 3N (P) 4♦ SSKC?
1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 3♠ (P) 3N (P) 4♥ Kickback?

tyia

I really dislike minorwood (or put another way, I love opps playing minorwood). You need to be able to agree on trumps without asking. Many many hands are suitable for play in a minor, often in slam, that are unsuitable for asking for keys with.

I play kickback in all my serious partnerships, with (in my opinion) less mishap than those reserving 4nt as their ask. While kickback does complicate some auctions, not having a natural 4nt is painful, for me, and having the response to the ask either be too high or make further suit asks awkward or impossible is a seriously unrated flaw in using 4nt for the ask for all suits. So, when you compare the minor flaws of kickback to the huge flaws in 4nt asking (in a serious partnership), I feel kickback is fairly easy to manage. Some auctions (few) just don't allow a key card ask; so what? We survive, and some auctions shouldn't have a keycard ask available playing 4nt asking.

When beginning kickback in a partnership, I start with some basic ground rules, which I recommend. There will be undiscussed auctions and situations that come up, so it's helpful to have some basic agreements. Mine are:

a) Strain before level. We're not asking for keys when we don't know what strain we're playing in.

b) The agreement is never the ask, unless it's an unnecessary jump (ie where you could have bid the suit naturally and 100% forcing at a lower level).

c) What didn't partner do earlier in the auction? (this sorts out most KB questions)

d) (most important starter rule) -- If you think the auction has gone off the rails because of possible KB confusion, jump to the slam you were most seriously thinking about (or the cheapest if more than one). Odds are you were headed there anyway, and this is hardly likely to be a disaster.

Brian Zaugg

[jillybean]

 rhm, on 2012-October-04, 04:11, said:

1♥ (2♠) 3♦ (P) 4♦ is not competitive, since opponents did not bid after 3♦. Also most play 3♦ (new suit at the three-level by responder) as game forcing

In an uncontested auction responders new suit at the 3 level is game forcing, in this auction we play it as 1 round forcing and tolerance for partners suit.

 rhm, on 2012-October-04, 04:11, said:

No good reason why 4♦ should not be minorwood, which you seem to call SSKC.

Han answered this well.

 Zelandakh, on 2012-October-04, 04:38, said:

You can apply the same logic to the other auction: 1♥ - (2♠) - 3♦ - (P); 3♠ - (P) - 3NT - (P). Now bidding again over 3NT must surely agree diamonds and show that the 3♠ bid was a cue. So 4♣ is a cue, 4♦ is a slam try (without club control) and 4♥ is Kickback. Here it should be clear that 4♥ cannot be natural since with that hand partner would have started with 3♥.

Either I'm not understanding your answer or you have misread the auction. Opener is rebidding hearts, not responder.

 fromageGB, on 2012-October-04, 07:03, said:

An interesting question. I am sure it can get very confusing if you play both minorwood and kickback.

My partner wanted to play both a year or so ago but at the time it had me so confused that I quickly dropped the minorwood part.
I think I'm ready to take another crack at it now.

Han, I understand and agree with your first post, I am still working on your second post.

[Flem72]

per Kantar's opus (the next to last edition of which I think I d/led free somewhere), generally:

With few exceptions: suit agreement is never the ask. After minor suit agreement at the 2 or 3 level, 4m is minorwood, regardless of competition, provided that suit agreement is game forcing. Minor suit agreement at the 4 level is never minorwood (exceptions in strong hand auctions and some auctions by unlimited hands); the RKCB ask is usually kickback (exceptions whre 4H would be to play based on prior introduction of the suit).

The exceptions can be troublesome; I'll be happy to foreward my notes.

[PhilKing]

 Flem72, on 2012-October-04, 17:59, said:

per Kantar's opus (the next to last edition of which I think I d/led free somewhere) ...

Please do not do this.

Pay the man!

[Zelandakh]

I had not misread the auction but I had assumed Responder's 3♦ was game forcing. If this were the case then Opener can rebid 3♥ with real hearts without any problems of it being passed out. Therefore starting with a cue and bidding again over partner's 3NT must logically show diamond support and slam interest. When 3♦ is only F1R and Opener's 3♥ is passable then we have a different situation. Presumably this is the reason for the misunderstanding.

@PhilKing, Kantar's RKCB notes are available at the Bridge with Dan website and he himself posted them online. It is not a pirated copy or something for which payment is required.

[PhilKing]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-October-05, 03:00, said:

@PhilKing, Kantar's RKCB notes are available at the Bridge with Dan website and he himself posted them online. It is not a pirated copy or something for which payment is required.

My bad. I just get mad even if I here that someone has borrowed a bridge book.

[Codo]

Whether a direct minorwood is good or bad is more a religious thing then anything else. You can belive that it solves your problems or you can belive that it creates more problems. And like in real life, the belivers and non-belivers will not agree, nor do they have any facts to back up their opinion- just fading memories.

I love to play minorwood as asking for a good/bad slam hand first and partner just answers the KC question if he has a good hand. Of course this does not solve all problems of minorwood, but espacially in your given scenario it is very important to be able to limit at least one hand before you drive to slam...

[Zelandakh]

Codo, by this do you mean the convention I suggested earlier (first step = bad; steps 2-5 = good + key card response) or that you should bid 5m with the bad hand and the normal Minorwood response with a good hand. If you play the second of these then I strongly recommend trying out the former which I think is several orders of magnitude better.

[rhm]

 han, on 2012-October-04, 05:16, said:

The reason is that you might want to raise diamonds unambiguously without asking for keycards.

I hear this all the time usually accompanied by claims that there exists myriads of hands like that.
I do not claim these hands do not exist, but are the exception not the rule.

The truth is:

a) If you are in a game forcing sequence, minor suit agreement at the four level tend to have strong slam implications nine times out of ten at least.
b) There is no good unambiguous alternative for all those hands, where you urgently would like to ask for key-cards in the minor (previously agreed or not) and in my experience these are much more common.
c) Even for hands where key card ask may not be perfect, say you have a void or you are missing first and second round control in a side suit, the precise information you receive from key card ask, is often at least as useful as some control showing response. Control showing responses, which start only above four of the agreed suit, are not very effective.
d) Minorwood responses allows 4NT to be played as natural. At matchpoints (and not so rare even at IMPs) you often want to stop in 4NT, if slam is bad not in five of a minor.

Rainer Herrmann

[Codo]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-October-05, 04:26, said:

Codo, by this do you mean the convention I suggested earlier (first step = bad; steps 2-5 = good + key card response) or that you should bid 5m with the bad hand and the normal Minorwood response with a good hand. If you play the second of these then I strongly recommend trying out the former which I think is several orders of magnitude better.

Yes. I play it the same way as you do, anything else looks horrible to me. Is there a name for it? In German it is "bedingte Asfrage", but I have no idea what it is called elsewhere..

[Zelandakh]

I only know it from my own imagination and did not even know anyone else played it. I called it a "compromise convention" because it was meant as a compromise between the alternatives. Probably a better name would be "Optional Minorwood", since the Blackwood equivalent, where you pass 4NT with a min but show aces with a max, is called Optional Blackwood.

[PhilKing]

 Codo, on 2012-October-05, 06:00, said:

Yes. I play it the same way as you do, anything else looks horrible to me. Is there a name for it? In German it is "bedingte Asfrage", but I have no idea what it is called elsewhere..

It was in one of Rosenkranz' books about 20 years ago - I think he called it "RKCB min/max zoom" - not very catchy, but I still use that description. He also had some relay situations where, after showing shortage, you bid step 1 with a void and make a "zoom" RKCB response with singleton.

[Zelandakh]

 PhilKing, on 2012-October-05, 06:50, said:

It was in one of Rosenkranz' books about 20 years ago - I think he called it "RKCB min/max zoom" - not very catchy, but I still use that description. He also had some relay situations where, after showing shortage, you bid step 1 with a void and make a "zoom" RKCB response with singleton.

Funnily enough I am doing this too in certain auctions - using the first step to show a void. I have never read any books by Rosenkranz but it does rather sound like I should!