[nailseaz]

You are playing BBO on-line with a stranger. Your profiles show Acol and RKCB.

What do you do when there is no agreed suit e.g. partner opens 2NT and re-bids 3NT?

[nailseaz]

Playing RKCB - what do you do when more that one suit has been bid and there is no clear indication in the bidding of the preferred end suit and thus unclear on the suit to use in answering key cards in RKCB?

[DavidKok]

To use a key card asking gadget of any kind you should first establish what will be trumps. In general finding a sharp slam requires four main factors. In order of importance:

• A trump suit.
  
• Enough playing strength for 12 tricks, given time.
  
• Four out of five key cards.
  
• A control (first or second round) in each suit.

RKC checks the third, but you should be concerned with the first and second much more often. Set trumps and allow partner to evaluate their hand so you can estimate your combined trick-taking potential.

My personal rule is that a jump bid never asks for key cards (though unfortunately a few exceptions have snuck in). Many people play the opposite, and like to jump to their key card tools frequently. This is playable as long as you have clear agreements about what this promises in terms of trump support and playing strength, plus that you have a route to investigate slam with a hand unsuitable for bidding RKC.

[apollo1201]

As David says, slam bidding requires several things that usually get sorted before RKCB.

The fact that partner opens 2NT and rebids 3NT is striking. What did you bid in between (Stayman? Xfer?) and what does 3NT mean as a response to your bid?

You can bid 4 something hoping you do nt get passed out there, at least to suggest trump. But partner might retract to 4NT if they really are not interested at all.

Given 2NT is pretty well defined in terms of HCP and given you have virtually used all space up to RKCB, maybe the best is to punt or try something quantitative.

Anyway with a stranger you cannot be sure of everything.

[nailseaz]

apollo1201, on 2024-March-16, 09:23, said:

As David says, slam bidding requires several things that usually get sorted before RKCB.

The fact that partner opens 2NT and rebids 3NT is striking. What did you bid in between (Stayman? Xfer?) and what does 3NT mean as a response to your bid?

Partner opens 2NT / I bid 2D (relay) / partner re-bids 3NT . . . . . no suit is established so clearly RKCB is redundant . . what is the generally agreed pathway after this for me if I have, foe example 13hcp?

[Tramticket]

nailseaz, on 2024-March-16, 07:36, said:

partner opens 2NT and re-bids 3NT?

4NT will be quantitative, not RKCB.

[Tramticket]

nailseaz, on 2024-March-16, 07:42, said:

Playing RKCB - what do you do when more that one suit has been bid and there is no clear indication in the bidding of the preferred end suit and thus unclear on the suit to use in answering key cards in RKCB?

Our rule is that the RKCB asks in the last suit agreed, or the last suit bid naturally, if no suit has been agreed.

[nailseaz]

DavidKok, on 2024-March-16, 08:18, said:

To use a key card asking gadget of any kind you should first establish what will be trumps.

Agreed . . . . my question is . . . . what do you if a trump suit is not established? Do you, for example reverts to simple Blackwood or maybe Gerber?

[DavidKok]

No, in general I focus on step 1 (settingn a trump suit) before step 2 (verifying our combined playing strength) before step 3 (some ace asking tool). If you do not have a trump suit you should first find the right strain, or make a quantitative bid if no strain appeals. I think many players would be better off without Gerber, Blackwood, RKC, Exclusion, Kickback, Redwood, Minorwood and a million other gadgets asking for aces. Oftentimes the best route to slam involves describing your hand as accurately as possible so that partner can evaluate their hand, rather than invoking a counting tool.

Your example auction is tough, partner opened the 2NT 'slam killer'. I have agreements here to catch up but clearly you are in no man's land if partner rejected your transfer without agreement.

[prescot_td]

The problem with RKCB is that a trump suit must be agreed / identified and half of the slams (made by average skill level) pairs) are NT and RKCB is then redundant.

The problem with ordinary Blackwood is that there is little to no exit, once 4NT is bid it is difficult to get out under 6NT

The problem with Gerber is . . . there is no problem with Gerber it does the job and has space to get out at the 5 level if necessary . . . I DO NOT understand why there is there is this a form of Bridge 'snobbery' view that only weaker players use Gerber.

[mikeh]

prescot_td, on 2024-March-16, 12:58, said:

The problem with RKCB is that a trump suit must be agreed / identified and half of the slams (made by average skill level) pairs) are NT and RKCB is then redundant.

The problem with ordinary Blackwood is that there is little to no exit, once 4NT is bid it is difficult to get out under 6NT

The problem with Gerber is . . . there is no problem with Gerber it does the job and has space to get out at the 5 level if necessary . . . I DO NOT understand why there is there is this a form of Bridge 'snobbery' view that only weaker players use Gerber.

Gerber has its place and I don’t know any good players who’d disagree….and I know a lot of good players.

The problem with Gerber is that weak players tend to use it in all kinds of situations. Jillybean fairly recently described playing at a local club (I think in N.Z. but may misremember) where it was universal that any 4C bid in a strong auction was Gerber!

Afaik, when experts play Gerber, it’s only over a notrump type of auction, in which the last call was 1N or 2N….a jump to 4C is then Gerber.

Expert partnerships tend to have a huge number of specialized agreements, which are not played just to be able to claim to play complex methods but because such agreements facilitate bidding many different hand types. For such partnerships, a 4C bid, in a constructive auction, has many possible uses and, in most sequences, asking for aces is not going to be the best use.

Depending upon the auction,in my main partnership a bid of 4C could be (depending on context)…

natural

Natural but showing a solid suit

A variant of Gerber, we call min-max Gerber

Straight Gerber

A cuebid

A puppet to 4D, to show one of various strong slam tries

An answer to a shape relay

Keycard in diamonds (after 1S 2H 3D)

Describing a moderate 4=6 hand after 1x 1M ?

A void splinter

A splinter, likely a stiff but possibly a void

A request (after a multi opening) for opener to transfer into his major

I’m sure I’ve omitted one or two, lol

Plus most expert partnerships have various ways to ask for keycards or aces other than 4N or 4C.

Thus it’s not snobbery. Expert pairs chose systemic meanings based on several factors, but I’ve never heard anyone say something like….’we can’t play that! Only weak players play that!’

I’m currently playing a highly complex method, based on a T-Walsh structure but with a host of specialized gadgets. Factors we consider include

Memory load. Fortunately we’re currently both able to spend a lot of time studying and practicing..let me give a shout-out to the app Bid72.

Coherence…does our overall system work well….are there redundancies? (Never have two sequences that show exactly the same hand) Are there gaps…hands we can’t handle ? (Yes…every system has gaps, but we try to reduce the gaps and try to confine them to rare hand types and hope then to guess well)

Legality….here in ACBLand our multi can only be used in team games, so we have to play something else at mps.

Is there a better mousetrap? Our current primary teammates are a great pair wth methods different from but almost as complex as ours, so we compare notes and we’ve adopted a few of their treatments, of which we’d not heard before)

In our view, 4C is far too valuable (for various meanings, situationally defined) to use for the crude tool of asking for aces. Btw, I’d estimate that we bid slams without asking for keycards about 25% of the time and grands about 15% of the time. We use keycard not to bid small slams but to stay out of them or confirm the impression we had, before using keycard, that we have slam values. Also, keycard asking is very useful in considering grands, most of the time.

[smerriman]

nailseaz, on 2024-March-16, 10:38, said:

Partner opens 2NT / I bid 2D (relay) / partner re-bids 3NT . . . . . no suit is established so clearly RKCB is redundant . . what is the generally agreed pathway after this for me if I have, foe example 13hcp?

Assuming you meant 3♦ as a transfer to hearts, then 3nt does not exist for most people, and is a common example of random BBO partners having no clue how to bid. There is therefore no agreed pathway for any bids after that; for these partners bidding is generally random.

If they had responded 3♥, there are no bids that ask for aces, since if you needed to (which I suspect is unlikely), your 3♦ bid was a mistake. If you provide both hands you can get some help as to the right bidding on both sides.

[johnu]

nailseaz, on 2024-March-16, 10:38, said:

Partner opens 2NT / I bid 2D (relay) / partner re-bids 3NT . . . . . no suit is established so clearly RKCB is redundant . . what is the generally agreed pathway after this for me if I have, foe example 13hcp?

Playing in an established partnership with a competent partner, I would expect that any response to the 3♦ transfer bid except accepting the transfer with 3♥ is some kind of superaccept in support of hearts (exact meaning determined by partnership agreement).

Playing with a random partner of unknown skill on BBO, your best guess should be that your partner doesn't know what he is doing. In that case, every 4NT is Blackwood. The other question is whether hearts is agreed on as trump since it is the only suit that has been bid. Again, with a random player, can you be sure that partner knows the 3♦ was a transfer???

[smerriman]

prescot_td, on 2024-March-16, 12:58, said:

The problem with Gerber is . . . there is no problem with Gerber it does the job and has space to get out at the 5 level if necessary . . . I DO NOT understand why there is there is this a form of Bridge 'snobbery' view that only weaker players use Gerber.

Correcting your wording slightly - there is no problem with Gerber *if* it does the job. When only playing it over 1NT/2NT as intended, the number of hands where Gerber is the correct tool is *extremely* rare, yet weaker players use it regularly, in a similar way that they often use RKCB many times they shouldn't.

I've seen people say that Gerber is on their card but they've never actually had a hand suitable for it in several years of play - that rare seems about right.

Therefore, it is just a simple probabilistic fact that almost all uses of Gerber are by weaker players.

[thepossum]

People make Bridge sound so complicated

Usually it is fairly obvious when you have agreed a suit - that includes me jumping to 4NT after many natural suit bids lol

Regarding Gerber I am a very average player who likes to use it occasionally if I have a nice hand and fear a quant may miss 6 or 7 NT - nice and simple way to ask for important controls - I have this beautiful running suit but maybe we need to check for all Aces - and its such a simple method of commnicating that number too - simple intuitive - oh I have forgotten - let me work it out using common sense

Can I suggest this thread belongs in N/B not I/A

Edit strangely also I find RKCB more difficult to navigate than standard Blackwood sometimes - full of traps - if we are using it to avoid bidding bad slams - oh sorry you play 1430 - my bad

[jillybean]

thepossum, on 2024-March-16, 19:24, said:

Edit strangely also I find RKCB more difficult to navigate than standard Blackwood sometimes - full of traps - if we are using it to avoid bidding bad slams

It's not the right tool to use in avoiding bad slams, but neither is Blackwood.

[jillybean]

nailseaz, on 2024-March-16, 07:36, said:

You are playing BBO on-line with a stranger. Your profiles show Acol and RKCB.

What do you do when there is no agreed suit e.g. partner opens 2NT and re-bids 3NT?

On-line with a stranger, hold your beath and make a bid.
You can't have a sensible auction without agreements.