fromageGB

My book says 21/22 balanced, but no matter. Let's have more of these off the wall ideas. Out of madness might come genius.

I thought is WAS standard to lead small in a suit bid by partner but not supported. If not bid, I lead high to show no interest, supported I lead high to show no honour. But bid and unsupported - low every time.

Fair enough in general, but after 2♥4SF 3♦ 4♣ 5♣ it may be a bit late for 4NT. Many people play "Blackwood agrees the last bid suit".

Depends on your ace responses ; RKCB ones don't help. Using the simpler 1234 method we find it very easy and nothing to remember. We ignore X, and if they bid a suit, we have X = "I would have bid that", a bid means more aces than that, and a pass is fewer than that. Seems to work. It gives us a choice of game or penalty when the slam is missing.

Maybe their methods are such that the first 2 opener bids describe all that responder needs to know, such as balanced hand 2254 and a 12-14 count. Now responder simply wants a small slam if this is upper end. I don't know, but it is a valid question - how would you bid a quantitative small slam ask? Rephrase - how would you use "all the bidding space in the world" ?

Something like this, but if you are using kickback with 4♦ being ace asking in clubs, that 4NT will be taken as ace asking in spades. I'd 4SF 2♥, then (assuming partner does not bid spades) bid 4NT quantitative. If I was interested in spade slam without having support, I would have jumped to 4NT immediately. So 4SF then 4NT is something else, ie natural. For me, an immediate 4♦ is ace ask in clubs, and immediate 4♥ is ace ask in diamonds. So 4SF then bid ♦ is forcing but implying not good enough to ace ask immediately.

Thanks for the examples, I've never played, or come across opponents using, the walsh style. I can see the advantages on stronger hands. I play transfer walsh, and this has similar but different gains and trade-offs.

But how is this better than 1♣ 1♦ 1♠ 1NT? I can see that the latter is better if there is a diamond fit, and there is a slight advantage that the oppo on lead does not know you have 4 hearts, so the lead might be advantageous. I can't see how bidding hearts rather than diamonds helps on this hand. It may be a consequence of your methods, which possibly may be better elsewhere, but on this hand I think it is worse.

That's tough; here it is OK if 2♣ is invitational or better. I suppose the restriction is not too onerous, though, if you have a way of showing an invitational 5 card hand (I guess in GCC legalities this has to be a jump bid?), because a 3xx3 can bid 2♣, and a 3xx2 will have a 5 card suit to bid, even a lousy one, with the understanding that you may later bid the major with 3, and opener rebids 3M in preference to going beyond this if not accepting a game invitation. If you have no 5 card suit, then you will have a 3442 precisely and bid 1NT over spades or spades over hearts (also 1NT if KI). That way you can still put invitational 3xx3+ hands through the 2♣ bid.

My Euro 2012 prediction 1 Spain 2 Germany 3 Portugal :)

I'm very happy with a forcing NT and Bergen type bids that show 4 card support. I get to play in 1NT when opening 1♥ playing KI, when it's the right contract, so that's 50% of the time. Contrary to expressed opinion, I think it important and a benefit to distinguish between a 3 card raise and a 4 card raise, even if you do adjust the necessary hcp by 2 or 3 points. In the uncontested auction it can help opener know that he is likely to be able to get a ruff, whereas with 3 card support he may have to use them in drawing trumps. More importantly, in the contested auction when the opponents come in with a bid higher than your 3M it is usually vital to know which is which. 3 card support and extra strength points to a double, whereas 4 card support and lesser strength points to bidding on. Another under-rated benefit of the distinction is that if your Bergen raises are split 7-10 (allowing game invitation if upper end) and 11/12, then it guarantees your Jacoby 2NT or equivalent is a solid 13+. Many 11/12s will go on to game after a minimum 3M rebid, of course. But the benefit of this over a weaker top Bergen means your slam bidding after 2NT is more assured. If your top Bergen had to include game invitational 3 card support, then this would not be true. As for the game invitational 3 card support, I agree with the others who suggest putting it into the 2♣ response. Do this regardless of whether you switch to non-forcing NT. After recent forum discussion on this topic, I now play that 2♣ is any one of 3 card support 11+, natural 5 card 13+, or any 16+ that has no 5 card suit. Unless opener is 55xx or a 15+ 5 card minor, he bids 2♦, and the 11/12 3 card support bids 2M. Now a weaker opener can pass the game invitation and play in 2M rather than the usual 3M. A stronger responder with 3 cards agrees the suit with 3M and then you are in your normal GF zone, with serious/non-serious or whatever. If you did switch to non-forcing, as Cthulhu said, you than have to decide what to do with 11/12 balanced hands and invitational long minors, and in my case GF 13-15 balanced hands that go in the forcing bid. If you have to put ALL these in the 2C response, it would become to unwieldy and you won't have any simple method of resolving them. A good reason to keep a forcing next step.

Agree with Mike - always start 1♦ and reverse over 1♠. However, with the agreement of a "shortage" diamond and a 3 suited NT rebid, this is an easy simple 1♦ 1♠ 3NT. Partner then knows to bid 4♥ if he has 4.

... then you are probably not an ornithologist.

Nobody mentioned the alternative X to transfer to hearts (showing 5) then rebid (hence showing these values) 2♠. That's my choice, rebidding 3♠ if West goes 3♦ and partner does not double.

Keeping on topic, I can understand those people who would prefer - having seen the whole hand - to end in diamonds, but as opener may only have 1 or 2, and we have the values for 1NT, I much prefer 1NT. But how to get there? Not playing transfers, my preference would be to bid 1♦ as that way you are not going to miss any fit. So 1♣ 1♦ 1♠ 1NT. I don't go with those who would have opener rebid 1NT rather than 1♠, as that might miss a spade fit, as I would also be bidding 1♦ on a 4252 shape. And I am not worried by opener possibly having a shapely hand such as the cited 4207 or 5206 as those hands will surely rebid 2♣ and 2♠ respectively (though my preference would be to open 1♠ on the latter). So I cannot agree with 1♠ showing an unbalanced rebid. If you don't bid 1♦ then you will end in the wrong contract when opener is {31}45 with a singleton in your bid major.

I thought a standard was to use curly brackets around the suits where the length applies to any of those suits, and no curly brackets indicating the exact length, with suits in sequence spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. No? So {4333} is any flat hand with one 4 card suit, 2452 is 2 spades, 4 hearts, etc, and {54}22 is 5-4 in the majors but 5 in either major.

So play forcing 1NT (or forcing next step). Then rebid 2NT invitational. I agree with you if 2NT may be merely invitational. The weaker hands are much more likely than the stronger. But if J2N is 13+ and 4 card support, then slam is a more realistic prospect, and you need tools to find it. Any tool will give information away, unavoidably, but the net result is better than guesswork.

I don't think you have ever played against me, gwnn, but it is definitely weak, 4 card 0-6 on my CC ! And while I actually have bid 0 hcp NV, I probably would not do it with 0-3 vulnerable.

Justin, I don't understand this. Non-experts like myself have not had complex bidding sequences that show all there is to know about the hand by the time you reach 4 of the agreed minor, and want to ask for aces when considering a small slam, and then kings when looking for a grand slam. If you don't play kickback but play RKCB, a 2 KC reply commits you to the small slam when you are not suitable to play in 5NT. I like the ability to stop in 5 of the minor. Again, with clubs as trumps even a one KC reply takes you too high when you were looking for two. If your rules are such that you never mistake a kickback ask, then it surely has to be a big improvement for non-experts. And of course it is easier if you use it all the time for every suit.

Sorry, you have asked this twice with no answer it seems. It depends on whether you want anything beyond a K ask. If you have a "3rd round ask" (whatever that is), as mentioned by quiddity who does't play kickback, then I think you would need to, so that there is space for the other asks and their replies. But for me, the K ask is the last ask, and there is no need for anything other than to use the same asking suit as used for aces. This keeps it simple and unforgettable. If 4♦ asks for aces, then 5♦ asks for kings. There is room to show all specific kings and still stop in 6♣ when any K is missing. So there is no need to have a different asking suit that may be misinterpreted.

Mmm. Sounds good, but this can only happen in just one suit, when the suit is clubs, and only when the ace reply is the first step. 2 steps and you have had it. A bit limited. When it is the second step - or the first step when diamonds are trumps - 4NT is the Q asking bid itself, so the reply must be higher.

When playing a kickback, I think it is a mistake whatever the trump suit to attempt to keep 4NT as natural. You will then be really stuck when you need the queen for a slam. Definitely the next step should be the queen ask. What I don't understand is the way people use RKCB 3041 or 4031 etc. It doesn't make sense to me, never having played that over a 4NT ask. When I converted to kickback after reading the old useful space article I adopted a simple 1234 approach. Much easier. And of course more certain - I have seen distributional hands where you will NOT know whether the answer is 0 or 3. But that aside, kickback gives you the room to identify exactly. The compression built into the RKCB responses is designed to give you as much room as possible when starting with 4NT, when suits other than spades are trumps. This is not the case with kickback. As asker would not be asking for the Q unless he was going on to ask for kings if teller had the Q, then it makes sense for the response to the queen ask to be the next step to deny the Q, but to go on to give the king response if you do have the Q.

I hated even more having to use stayman as a way of bidding an invitational 2NT. Switch to a 15/16 NT. Then you don't need invitations, it's just 1 or 3.

The problem on this sequence is as Zel says. It seems your 3NT leaves the number of clubs unspecified, so it could still be a doubleton. There is an awful lot of space between 2♣ and 3NT. Are you sure you can't use some of that space to help, so at least by the time the bidding gets to 3NT you know whether it is a genuine club suit?

Your last 2 examples would seem to be solved by having 4♣ to play and 4♦ as unambiguous kickback. The one starting 1♣ 1♥ is safe for minorwood, but again kickback is stand-out unmistakable. I agree with rhm that ace asking is more important than cue bidding at the 4 level. But in this example, maybe any suit over the 3♣ would be a cue bid insisting on clubs. If you need those bids for other purposes, then I'd give up on cue bidding this hand.