[oldem]

As South, you hold the following hand with the bidding as shown.
The response of 5♣ is assumed to mean: 0 or 4 key cards (first-time partner!)

---

[neilkaz]

0 or 4 key cards when I am looking at 2? To the OP. 1) Please edit this if needed. 2) Please always include form of scoring with ALL bidding questions.

[bluerib]

neilkaz, on 2016-April-02, 21:18, said:

0 or 4 key cards when I am looking at 2? To the OP. 1) Please edit this if needed. 2) Please always include form of scoring with ALL bidding questions.

5♣ – 0 or 4 key cards
5♦ – 1 or 3 key cards
5♥ – 2 or 5 cards without the trump queen
5♠ – 2 or 5 key cards with the trump queen

[gordontd]

bluerib, on 2016-April-03, 03:37, said:

5♣ – 0 or 4 key cards
5♦ – 1 or 3 key cards
5♥ – 2 or 5 cards without the trump queen
5♠ – 2 or 5 key cards with the trump queen

It's usual to pair up 0 & 3, 1 & 4, because a three-card gap is easier to work out than a 2 or 4 card gap. Nevertheless, if they really were playing such a thing, the 5C response together with my two key-cards would show a total of 2 or 6, one of which is impossible and the other wouldn't merit further investigation with 5NT. But to my mind the 4NT bid is all wrong. Assuming 2H was a strong jump-shift, there's no need to take over and ask for key-cards. Even if you are certain that partner has a good six-card suit (which I don't think need be the case) you could just raise to 3H and let partner tell you more.

[oldem]

gordontd, on 2016-April-03, 03:56, said:

It's usual to pair up 0 & 3, 1 & 4, because a three-card gap is easier to work out than a 2 or 4 card gap. Nevertheless, if they really were playing such a thing, the 5C response together with my two key-cards would show a total of 2 or 6, one of which is impossible and the other wouldn't merit further investigation with 5NT. But to my mind the 4NT bid is all wrong. Assuming 2H was a strong jump-shift, there's no need to take over and ask for key-cards. Even if you are certain that partner has a good six-card suit (which I don't think need be the case) you could just raise to 3H and let partner tell you more.

For the case at stake, it seems to me there is no difference whether it is 0 & 3 or 0 & 4. I only need to know that my partner holds the other 2 aces and the ♥K.

[Zelandakh]

oldem, on 2016-April-04, 08:44, said:

I only need to know that my partner holds the other 2 aces and the ♥K.

Maybe we are missing something but from our perspective it appears that partner absoluely does not hold these 3 cards. Given that this is a first time partner I would be inclined at that point to suspect either that 2♥ was meant as a WJS or that 5♣ was really 0 or 3. But what you are telling us makes no sense so I do not really understand what you expect to get as feedback. Moreover, probably no forum posters whatsoever would choose this auction. What was the rush to use RKCB in a GF auction? Even after using RKCB, why not check for the ♥Q along the way? So my suggestion would be to re-start the thread with a clearer idea of what the agreements are and what you actually want to get out of it.

[gordontd]

oldem, on 2016-April-04, 08:44, said:

For the case at stake, it seems to me there is no difference whether it is 0 & 3 or 0 & 4. I only need to know that my partner holds the other 2 aces and the ♥K.

Of course it makes a difference. If it's 0 or 4, you know it can't be 4 unless someone has made a mistake - either in showing the number of key-cards, in knowing what your agreement is, or in knowing whether you are playing strong jump-shifts or weak.

If you are hoping to find out "that my partner holds the other 2 aces and the ♥K" then it's pretty important to know which response shows three key-cards - 5C or 5D.

[gszes]

The question of what the blackwood sequence means (or supposed to mean) misses the point here. To jump into a blackwood sequence with a new partner and the meaning of 2h not clear is total nonsense. Even if you were SURE 2h was GF and max 1 loser heart suit it would still be a terrible idea. Imagine responder with xxx KQJT9876 AKQ void this would meet "everyones" idea of a GF 2h jump yet slam seems absurd missing 3 top spade tricks. As noted above 0314 or 1430 are the most popular key card blackwood variants.

[rmnka447]

I'm assuming this pair is playing strong jump shifts.

The question OP poses comes from opening bidder in this auction rushing to use RKCB without having a clue what kind of hand the strong jump shift bidder has. The proper answer is don't use RKCB until you've learned more about jump shifters hand. You can do that by simply making a 3 ♣
rebid. After a 3 ♣ rebid, the jump shifter can now make a rebid that will tell something more about his/her hand.

[Winstonm]

Blackwood, regardless of the type, would never occur to me with this hand. My last call is unknown, but my second call is tough, and I pick 3H as Ax is good enough to support the suit of a strong jump shift and unlikely to get us in too much trouble if partner meant it as weak. But Blackwood with 2 suits uncontrolled? No, I should think not.

[kenberg]

oldem, on 2016-April-02, 20:09, said:

As South, you hold the following hand with the bidding as shown.
The response of 5♣ is assumed to mean: 0 or 4 key cards (first-time partner!)

---

It is hard to say much w/o looking like I am piling on. If 5C really is 0/4 then, since you have 2, surely he has 0 or else there is an extra ace in the deck. You conclude he has 0, from which you also conclude 2H was a weak junp shift, so you bid 5H over 5C and hope no one doubles.

Ok, now suppose that 5C is 0 or 3. Assuming now that 2H was a strong jump shift we have all the keys and, I would hope, the trump Q as well. So what do we do now? I pass.

But now a bit more. Maybe you play 5C shows 0 or 4 but surely you have noticed that most people play it as either 0/3 or 1/4. So at the least, you don't know if the response is 0/3 or 1/4. And throw in the non-standard possibility that it is 0/4. Why would you ask a question if you have no reason to believe that you will understand how to interpret the answer? This comes up a lot in BBO. You have to take a more practical approach. Opposite a known strong jump shift I imagine 3C is right over 2H. Opposite a weak jump shift pass is right. Opposite a jump shift that is maybe weak or maybe strong, I would bid 3H. If it is weak he will pass and we may be ok, if it is strong then we also may be ok. Maybe we will not be ok, but at least we will not be at the 5 level opposite a weak jump shift on QTxxxx and, maybe, an outside king or queen. Added benefit: If he is strong and he bids 4NT you can respond 5H showing 2 keys without the queen or two aces or whatever he might reasonably think it shows.

Playing pick up on BBO, the objective is to not get to a totally stupid contract.

[Zelandakh]

kenberg, on 2016-April-04, 15:36, said:

I imagine 3C is right over 2H.

I imagine opening 1NT was right and would have simplified the auction enormously. If we are playing a weak NT then this is an easy 2NT rebid.

[kenberg]

Zelandakh, on 2016-April-05, 02:08, said:

I imagine opening 1NT was right and would have simplified the auction enormously. If we are playing a weak NT then this is an easy 2NT rebid.

Yes, good point. Surely I would have opened this 1NT, I had not gone back that far in the auction with my thinking. I don't play weak nt often enough to have much of an opinion if it then starts 1C-2H(assumed strong). I would think that the concentration of values might still lead me to 3C but I will leave that to the weak notrumpers.

[oldem]

Zelandakh, on 2016-April-04, 08:58, said:

Maybe we are missing something but from our perspective it appears that partner absolutely does not hold these 3 cards. Given that this is a first time partner I would be inclined at that point to suspect either that 2♥ was meant as a WJS or that 5♣ was really 0 or 3. But what you are telling us makes no sense so I do not really understand what you expect to get as feedback. Moreover, probably no forum posters whatsoever would choose this auction. What was the rush to use RKCB in a GF auction? Even after using RKCB, why not check for the ♥Q along the way? So my suggestion would be to re-start the thread with a clearer idea of what the agreements are and what you actually want to get out of it.

Take the jump shift as a big hand of 17+ HCPs with a nearly solid ♥ suit. What is the criteria for it? It can't be Q-high 5-cards. Since you hold the ♥A, you can be sure that your partner has both the ♥K, the ♥Q, and probably the ♥J as well. This accounts for only 13-14 HCPs, if you take the 5♣ response to your 4NT asking as showing 3 key cards. Then where will be the other necessary 3-4 plus HCPs? The response of 6♥ to your 5NT asking shows 2 K's which can be either ♥K and ♠K or ♥K and ♦K. Still, you can expect your partner to hold 1 more Q or J somewhere to make up the necessary 17+ HCPs.

[Jinksy]

Well you've proven that your assumptions about partner's bidding contradict each other, so what's left for anyone to say? This bidding is so far off the rails it can't even see the trains going by.

Pass, and pray to any gods you happen to believe in that you're not going off 1 or 2 tricks.

[rmnka447]

I don't think that the strong jump shifter necessarily has a long and strong ♥ suit.

Typically, strong jump shifts could be any of the following "big hands":

- a big hand with a strong at least semisolid suit (which posters here are positing),
- a big hand with an extraordinary trump fit for opener's suit, or,
- a really big NT type hand.

These are all hands where unless opener's hand is extremely light or really bad that slam should be bid. This is the main reason opener should temporize and let the jump shifter tell his story. Then the strain and ball park for the hand come into view.

[rmnka447]

I agree with Jinksy that at this point in the actual auction opener should pass.

[kenberg]

oldem, on 2016-April-05, 09:30, said:

Take the jump shift as a big hand of 17+ HCPs with a nearly solid ♥ suit. What is the criteria for it? It can't be Q-high 5-cards. Since you hold the ♥A, you can be sure that your partner has both the ♥K, the ♥Q, and probably the ♥J as well. This accounts for only 13-14 HCPs, if you take the 5♣ response to your 4NT asking as showing 3 key cards. Then where will be the other necessary 3-4 plus HCPs? The response of 6♥ to your 5NT asking shows 2 K's which can be either ♥K and ♠K or ♥K and ♦K. Still, you can expect your partner to hold 1 more Q or J somewhere to make up the necessary 17+ HCPs.

Now not everyone plays 5NT as asking for the number of kings. But if it does show 2 kings then they are the kings of spades and diamonds since I have the king of clubs and the 5C bid included the king of hearts. You did mean that 4NT was keycard for hearts, did you not?

You need to think this through a bit. If partner has included the heart K to get to the 3 keys shown with 5C, then surely he would not count that heart K again in showing the number of kings, right? It's a nice card but you still count it onle once. So he has three kings, not 2, in total. The heart K he showed with 5C, the other two with 6H (given that 5H shows a king count).


As I get it, you have, between the two hands, the spade AK, the heart AKQ, the diamond AK, the club AKQJ, that's 11 tricks.
Partner has shown AK, KQ (Q assumed), AK. That's 19 highs. The long club might well be good, partner might have the heart J, various things might be. I am getting out in 6, but if I believe this arrangement, I bid 6NT.


Almost certainly I can develop a 12th trick somewhere, even if partner is missing both the J and the T of hearts and they split badly. There are more options in 6NT. Maybe the 5th club is good. Maybe partner has a queen. Maybe there is a squeeze. Maybe even it comes in on a finesse. Maybe a lot of things. At any rate, I am not bidding 7 of anything but if I now believe pard has at least the AK, the KQ, and the AK I choose 6NT.

And I make a note to discuss with partner what conventional meanings we have attached to our various calls.

[Zelandakh]

oldem, on 2016-April-05, 09:30, said:

Take the jump shift as a big hand of 17+ HCPs with a nearly solid ♥ suit.

You seem to know an awful lot more about your first-time partner's style of jump shift responses than we do. Given the level of detail I am surprised you need any advice whatsoever. But just to play devil's advocate a moment, what were your actual agreements with your partner? You already changed your agreement about the 5♣ call, perhaps other hand type are also possible for 2♥ than those that you envisage here.

[kenberg]

Zelandakh, on 2016-April-05, 16:00, said:

You seem to know an awful lot more about your first-time partner's style of jump shift responses than we do. Given the level of detail I am surprised you need any advice whatsoever. But just to play devil's advocate a moment, what were your actual agreements with your partner? You already changed your agreement about the 5♣ call, perhaps other hand type are also possible for 2♥ than those that you envisage here.

At the risk of (further) beating a dead horse I will expand on this a bit. Both players and commentators sometimes forget the distinction between "This is how I like to play it" and "This is what the bid means". It is unusual to see as many instances in one hand as there are here: 2H could be weak or strong, if strong there are many ideas of what this means, 4NT could be straight blackwood or keycard, 4C could be 0/3 or 1/4 (with 2 aces with opener 1/4 is incompatible with 2H being strong, and 0/4 is also imposible as well as weird), 5NT probably but not certainly confirms that all keycars, probably except for the Q, are accounted for and asks for something but exactly what depends on the partnership agreement. If 5H shows two kings I would certainly expect it to mean 2 kings other than the king of hearts, but apparently that was not the view here.

I am going to make a guess, quite possibly wrong. I guess that 7H, or maybe 7NT, is a laydown and the intention here is to determine what went wrong. If both hands were now to be presented, many here could suggest plausible auctions. Often it is tough to bid accurately with a first time partner, but staying away from undiscussed conventional calls is a good idea. In any partnership, or almost any, there are situations where the tools that you have are insufficient for the hand you were dealt. You do the best you can, using tools that you are confident that you and your partner are on the same page with.

I was playing the other day and the auction went:

1H-X-1NT-P
P P

It worked out fine, but partner noted that some people play the 1NT as still forcing over the X. I have never encountered anyone else, partner or opponent or someone I am kibbing, who plays this as forcing and I have never seen a suggestion in the literature to do so, but no doubt someone somewhere does play it this way. Maybe Kaplan Inversion, if played, is still on over a double, I don't play KI so I don't know.

I think that the auction

1C-P-1D-1H
X

should be a support double for diamonds, useful if we have to decide how high to compete over their hearts. I would not try it with a pick-up.

1C-P-1D-1S
X

is different. In the first case 1S was available to show four spades, in this latter case we need a call to show four hearts.

However logical this is or isn't, I would be wary of expecting a pickup partner to be on the same page. So we do our best.

We hope that at least some calls mean the same thing to just about everyone, but experience shows that this hope is often unfulfilled.