You are correct, my example was flawed. Your example though (1H-3H-4N-5D-5S) is, to me, as case where 5N should show the 'expensive' king. Also, after 1H-2N-4S(Kickback)-5H-5S(specific kings)-5N should show the king of spades.

These are only my 2nd and 3rd ever Cappelletti bids.

Hand One:

For IMPs, BBO.

Partner is an excellent card player, goodish bidder and plays SAYC. We have played many hands together. Opponents bid and play well.

W-W

__W__N__E__S
_(P)__P_(1N)_2c
_(2h)_P_(P)__3d
_(P)__P_(3h)__P
_(P)__P_

I am South and have:3 Q6 KQ98653 A53.

I am playing Cappelletti so I bid 2 intending to pass the diamond relay. However, natural bids of three are possible but this would not qualify would it as I have an outside Ace. [Though at the time, I gave that no consideration.] Am I just trying to be wise after the event and 2 is fine?

What about my further bid of 3? I am now happy to play it as a pre-empt.

Partner had Q9865 9853 J KQ2.

Did he have a 2 bid?

Hand Two:

For IMPs, BBO.

Partner as above. Opponents weak.

W-W

__W__N__E__S
_(1s)_P_(1N)_2c
_(4s)_P_(P)__P


I am South and I hold J65 AKQ953 8 942.

I have not come across any literature on this exact situation: LHO opens one of a suit, partner passes and RHO bids 1N and with you to play you have a hand that could be played as Cappelletti. I decide to play this hand as Cappelletti and bid 2 hoping to rebid 2 over 2 relay.

Is this an acceptable and recognised application of Cappelletti?

Opponents have between 18-30HCP combined at the point at which I intervene so I don't know just how aggressive/reckless I am being. Can someone tell me?

Re: Hand 2

You have a normal 2H bid. Capp would only apply over a 1N opener, not 1N by responder. Your 2C bid is natural there.

Capp hand 1: If you think your hand is good enough to bid 3 without something by partner, it's better to bid that right away. I think that's a better bid here: it makes it more difficult for them to bid their major suit game (if there is one).

Your second round 3 bid cant be a pre-empt. They've already given up in 2, so what would you want to pre-empt them out of. You are now purely bidding for what you think you can make. I think your hand is not good enough for that. You have 5-6 diamond tricks and 1 club trick. So partner has to bring in 2-3 tricks to make . Possible and maybe even quite likely, but still too risky because:
(1) If you're right, you win about 5 IMPs at best (if 2 and 3 are both making).
(2) If you're really wrong, they'll find a double for -300 or -500 and 5 to 10 IMP just going out on a nothing hand.

The mostlikely outcome is that it won't matter much either way, but (1) and (2) seem about equally likely to me, and the potential downside (2) is quite a bit larger than the potential upside (1).

BTW: In Matchpoints, 3 would be a no-brainer for me, because that just plays quite differently.

Theory of Capp and other NT defenses:

Assume the NT opener has 15-17 points. The likelyhood of you and your partner having enough for game is slim. Your goal using Capp, or DONT, or Landy, or whatever is to throw a bid in to disrupt their sequence, and fight for a possible part score if the responder is busted.

Once they settle in 2, there is nothing left to disrupt. Pass and defend.

Anyone going to be on BBO tonight?

Me!

Four questions:

Using RKB:

1. Once 4N has been bid then we are committed to bidding a small slam in our agreed suit, yes?

2. What is the likelihood of small slam not making?

3. Is it a disaster to have settled in a small slam and find that a grand slam was on?

4. How much judgment is needed to go to seven in the agreed suit as opposed to six?

Re (1): ****, no.The value of RKB is helping you to stay out of slam when the only problem is being off two key cards.

Re the others: all of this is dependent on the rest of your slam bidding, and has nothing to do with the use of any form of Blackwood... which shows why Blackwood really isn't all that important.

Cool, I got your PM. I'm Myrmidon73

I am on now.

So fun fact: I'm back at home for thanksgiving, and I'm playing with FCBL in our living room, and my dad wants to see what I'm doing. So, I let him play with Al.

I didn't really play any hands, although I answered some questions for him (like what does this 5H bid mean?...etc). He made some bids I would not have, like doubling 6H, and rebidding 1NT with AQJxxxx, but he really liked it, so that's pretty cool.

I watched most of the hands, and it was really fun. I'm glad to see that we have a much bigger POG following than we did when the thread started.

For MPs, BBO.

Partner is Myrmidon73 (or his dad, apparently) and opponents are Siegmund and FCBLcomish.

R-R

__W__N__E__S
_(P)__1d_(P)_4N
_(P)__5c_(P)_5h
_(P)__6d_(P)__P
_(P)

I am South holding A9 AT83 A732 AQ6.

Partner has opened 1 and I spot all four aces in my hand. I also have four diamonds. First thought: slam time. I bid 4N. Partner tells me he has one keycard, which must be the K. I don't know if Partner has the Queen of trump so I ask him for it: 5. He replies in the negative with 6. There is nothing left for me to do but pass.

Partner holds Q764 KQ2 KJ98 J9.

East leads 4.

Partner makes.

This is my first small slam using Roman Keycard Blackwood (1430).

I bring this to your attention so that you know that I am taking heed of the advice that you give me.

No reason to jump immediately to blackwood. Bid 1h and see what happens.

If he bids 2h, your best slam is likely 6H.

If he bids 3h, you might have 7H.

If he responds 1N you know you can likely stop at 6N.

If he responds 2N you know you likely have 7N.

If he bids 2D your best slam is likely 6D.

If he bids 3D your best slam is likely 7D.

while your hand is good, you have 3 problems
1) combined strength for slam may not be there (your LTC is 6, if you follow that. a minimum opener will have 7-8 suggesting you make 10-11 tricks)
2) diamonds might not be the best place. on a really bad day you don't have a fit (4=4=3=2 from partner). if you have a fit in both diamonds and hearts, hearts scores better and may play better.
3) Blackwood doesn't tell you what you want to known to be at the 6-level. if partner has no keycard and no queen you will want to be at 5. if he has the queen (and not the King) you will want to play in 6d (if points 1 & 2 above were addressed). generally BW is used for avoiding bad slams (missing 2 keycards, or 1 and the trump queen), not finding perfect ones

I'd start with 1H to get more information.

I am as of yet not experienced enough to weigh everything but I am working on it.

Someone made 6 alongside us. There was one 1 and two 2NT contracts. All of us made with no overtricks.

Honorable mention of rchandra and his useful post as well.

Here is how I probably bid the hand

1d 1h
1s 2c (artificial game force)
2nt 4nt
pass

4nt is not blackwood here. Instead quantitative asking him to bid 6nt if he has a good 13 or 14 HCP hand. This is not a high percentage slam.

Jumping to RKCB is no good here because you don't know what to do if partner says 0 keycards. If you intend to go to small slam anyway in that situation then you may as well just jump straight to 6D over 1D, because you're never bidding a grand slam (more on that in a sec). OTOH, if you intend to pass a response of 5D, you could be robbing your side of a good slam - partner could be as strong as all the rest of the high cards save the K.

I like Chuck's auction. With balanced hands it is difficult to make slams because there is no source of tricks. You will need about 32-33 high card points to make a small slam with balanced hands. With your hand that will mean 14-15 points from partner. After 2NT all he has disclosed is a minimum hand, so asking him to bid slam if he is at the top end of that range is what you want to do.

Al, be aware that just because you have a contraption available doesn't mean you should use it. Asking for the Q in this situation is useless because even if partner has it, you have no idea if grand slam is on or not (would be very ugly with partner's hand with Q instead of Q for instance), and due to the way scoring works you need to be virtually certain you have a grand before bidding that over a small slam. So all the Q ask does in this situation is divulge to the opponents who holds the trump Q.

For the benefit of Al and whoever else: the reason this is not Blackwood is that by jumping over 2NT, you implicitly agree to NT, and 4NT is never Blackwood in an auction where NT is agreed (cf. 4NT over opening 1NT and 2NT, for instance). In theory 4C is Gerber, a similar ace ask, but in practice I don't think I've ever used it because when looking for NT slams total HCP tends to be more important (of course it's important not to be off two aces, but finding out the partnership has 3 aces isn't helpful in whether to bid the slam normally).

Quantitative NT is one of the things I tend to avoid bidding with pickup partners unless I'm sure they will know it isn't Blackwood.

Al, if there's one weakness I have seen in your bidding that would be easy to fix, it's a tendency to jump to or toward what you have decided the best spot is, even when there are other possibilities and lower forcing bids are available. On this hand it's the precipitous jump to 4NT when the issue for slam is not key cards and you haven't yet worked out the proper strain (which from your perspective at that point rated to be hearts a moderate amount of the time and notrump about as often as diamonds). Imo you need to start thinking about keeping the auctions alive longer, just as a general thing, every time you are convinced there is game or better in the deal.

This is very true. I get tunnel visioned. I need to work on this.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

It was an interesting session all round playing with the guys from this subforum.

I was especially pleased with a hand that went P-P-1N-2s-P-2NT-P-3c-P-3d. This was a deal in which I had 8HCP including KQJT84 and passed originally. When partner (Myrmidon73) showed spades, I inquired about his unbid minor and then corrected to diamonds. We got 73.33% for this but more importantly the bidding was correct.

I was wondering about that. You made some bids and plays that I thought were odd.

After much research this is what I am playing in Roman Keycard Blackwood.

After 4N:

5c 1 or 4
5d 0 or 3
5h 2 w/o Q t
5s 2 w Q t

After 5c/5d response to 4N, 5 cheapest (not agreed suit) asking for Q of T, from which:

5 of agreed suit (if possible) = no Q of T
Any other 5 shows Q of T and King in that suit, cheapest King first
5N Q of T and no kings/if 5 of agreed possible then this is Q of T, no King but "extra"*
6 agreed suit = Q of T, no Kings, no "extra"/if no 5 level sign off then it shows no Q of T
6N = Q of T and 3 Kings

I have amalgamated a number of sources but this schema seems best to me.

*"extra" was not defined in source but would show void or QJT or something I imagine.

OK. How bad/good is the schema?

Can someone tell me more about kickback?

I know that cheapest bid after agreed suit starts it so could it theoretically start as low as two level, eg 1h-2h-2s?

Also, if bidding goes 1s-3s-4c then 5c becomes King Ask and 5s becomes cheapest Queen Ask, yes?

I think your RKC looks fine, although I always thought that the queen ask was forcing to SS, and looking for a grand.

1h-2h-2s needs to be a game try. I think 1h-3h-3s should probably be a control-bid. 1h-2c-3h-4h-4s could be kickback (and thus 1h-2c-3h-4h-4N would be a control-bid in spades). There are probably people who play kickback at the 3-level. My understanding is that it is only needed at the 4-level, giving that extra bit of room to make ace-asking easier in the minors (and a little in hearts)

in a spade auction bidding 5S is signoff no matter what sort of ace-asking was used (unless 4S was available, in which case it is some sort of invitation but needs to be discussed before use)

honestly, I think this area is not worth working on unless you are building a serious regular partnership (playing with pickups, even agreeing kickback, is just asking for misunderstandings). even then it can wait.

Earlier in this thread I have described a simplified but extremely effective method for keycard asking, in effect kickback without the mnemonic issues... but rchandra is exactly right that it is not worth even thinking about until you have a regular partnership and even then it's not a big deal. I strongly advise focusing elsewhere.

It's also correct that starting kickback below the four level is bad, as it takes away more useful bids. Remember, kickback and other ace-asking methods are useful only for avoiding slam when the partnership is off a couple of ashing aces or the equivalent, which is rarely the most pressing issue in slam investigations.