[pescetom]

As asked by many here,please post an example hand and auction where it gains over normal mechanisms.

[Lovera]

pescetom, on 2019-September-28, 15:47, said:

As asked by many here,please post an example hand and auction where it gains over normal mechanisms.

Another thing that can be added here (and you are right to talk about the declarative mechanism) is that, while in the classic RKB, once the opener has reported the presence of all the Keycards and the request of the Kings is started, the answer is always in the cheapest King under the level of trump. While with the re-interrogation it is foreseen also the simultaneous signaling of two Kings (with a series of predetermined answers slightly different from the usual). As for the hands to post, I do not find it very useful to have only a few (which is a little difficult to find), since the discussion (which is not limited to what has been said so far) has been set in a theoretical way to verify its compatibility.

[pescetom]

Nobody can force you to provide an example hand and auction if you don't want to. But in that case it looks like you have wasted a considerable amount of time here, as not all have understood and nobody is convinced.

[Lovera]

The indicated hand (with the original declaration) is taken from the 1951 World Championship in Naples. In North S. Stayman with H. Schenken in the South against P. Forquet with G. Siniscalco in the West / East. It is useful to represent the other case of the Queen of trumped alone or of the King in the suit of the request having the same answer of 5NT. The bidding proceeds from 5 ♠ for cue-bids while, if after 4 ♦ we declare 4NT(♦) we would have: N 5 ♦ (0-3) -5 ♥ (? For trump Q / K in ♥), 5 NT (yes Q or K) -6 ♣ (? Of the Kings), 6 ♦ (North has the Queen of trump without King at the side) -7 ♦.

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[Stephen Tu]

This is a very poor example to tout your proposed method.

• It's not a particularly great grand. South would want North to have one of the HK/CK to make it laydown. As it is, you need to either play for a dummy reversal, or a heart/club squeeze against West. Either could fail with E/W cards modified/swapped, and one can easily go down if you don't guess what layout to play for.
• Some people would play kickback and be able to ask with 4H after diamond agreement. Heart opening is weird though unless playing British Acol style 4 cd M weak NT methods. That's what you get when comparing auctions from today vs 68 years ago.
• If playing kickback you get to ask 4H, partner bids 5nt, 5c is the Q ask, and you get all the info (DQ no side kings) at 6d level. Or maybe at 5H level if you swap responses around to really optimize space.
• With your method, you still had to bid 6c to disambiguate. Supposedly you have 6d as have DQ but not side K. What if partner had HK but not DQ? He can't give same answer, can he? So then you are committing to grand without DQ, which is terrible. You really want to find out if all keycards + DQ and a side K without committing beyond 6d.

This is illustrative that you need kickback to save space if you want to use query methods. You overloading responses to the Q ask doesn't really help with that.

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-October-03, 10:20, said:

This is a very poor example to tout your proposed method.

• It's not a particularly great grand. South would want North to have one of the HK/CK to make it laydown. As it is, you need to either play for a dummy reversal, or a heart/club squeeze against West. Either could fail with E/W cards modified/swapped, and one can easily go down if you don't guess what layout to play for.

  Quote

  In fact, Schenken chose a game line that included both eventualities, ending for a dummy reversal
• Some people would play kickback and be able to ask with 4H after diamond agreement. Heart opening is weird though unless playing British Acol style 4 cd M weak NT methods. That's what you get when comparing auctions from today vs 68 years ago.
• If playing kickback you get to ask 4H, partner bids 5nt, 5c is the Q ask, and you get all the info (DQ no side kings) at 6d level. Or maybe at 5H level if you swap responses around to really optimize space.

  Quote

  The kickback convention, being basically artificial or not being able to be chosen by the couple, is not included in the discussion.
• With your method, you still had to bid 6c to disambiguate. Supposedly you have 6d as have DQ but not side K. What if partner had HK but not DQ? He can't give same answer, can he? So then you are committing to grand without DQ, which is terrible. You really want to find out if all keycards + DQ and a side K without committing beyond 6d.

  Quote

It is true that 5NT (or 6♣as a substitute) serves to eliminate ambiguity (which had not already been solved previously or if the player does not go for the grand slam) and I agree that the example is not really suitable because with the King (6 ♥) in this case, we would go further but the hand was used only for the declarative phase up to the small slam. The first answer (5 ♥, 5 ♠, 5NT) nonetheless provides indications on the presence or absence of honors with the answer while the re-interrogation, which has prerogatives for use, is a function of the response (changing, therefore, the scale of the answers).

[Lovera]

This hand comes from the Saint-Vincent World Championship. In N / S there are Garozzo with Chiaradia while in W / E Theron with Desrousseaux. The bidding of 3 ♦ is a Canape' in the Neapolitan Club, the jump to ♠ and the repetition indicates a very solid suit. If 4NT is read as RKB (♦) then we have: N / S 5 ♣ (0-3) -5 ♥ (=? for tr.Q / Q-K in the suit of the request), 6 ♦ (= double negative having Jxx and no tr. Queen). If N had had in ♥ the Queen would have marked it on 5 ♠ (= Ace) and instead if had had the King would have bidded 5NT (then eventually continuing with the re-interrogation for the relative further details).The opening lead was the ♣4.

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[pescetom]

I don't see why 4NT should be read as RKCB(♦) when partner has shown no interest in your diamonds and has rebid his own solid spades. In any case this grand could be bid using more modern Italian methods, for instance:
1♦ - 1♠
1NT - 3♠
4♦ - 5♣
5NT - 6♦
7♦ - p
South can place partner with ♠AKQxxx ♥xx(x) ♦Ax(x) ♣Ax(x) here.

[Stephen Tu]

Another bad example.
RKC should be for spades not diamonds. South can ask (spades trumps), ask for SQ, then bid 7D (to play with solid diamonds, if North had AKQJxxx of spades he could correct).
With your auction, again you have a minor suit for trump which is bad for RKC (kickback/minorwood are played for reasons), lack of space. And you have South asking questions he doesn't care about. He has DQ, and didn't care about either the HK or HQ. He bid grand despite North having none of those! Basically he was relying on North having solid spades. You are enforcing a 5H ask on South just because it is the cheapest non-trump suit and he gets irrelevant answers about the heart suit he is not particularly interested in just because it is coincidentally the suit of the ask.

So what again is the advantage of your method?

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-October-04, 10:26, said:

Another bad example.
RKC should be for spades not diamonds. South can ask (spades trumps), ask for SQ, then bid 7D (to play with solid diamonds, if North had AKQJxxx of spades he could correct).
With your auction, again you have a minor suit for trump which is bad for RKC (kickback/minorwood are played for reasons), lack of space. And you have South asking questions he doesn't care about. He has DQ, and didn't care about either the HK or HQ. He bid grand despite North having none of those! Basically he was relying on North having solid spades. You are enforcing a 5H ask on South just because it is the cheapest non-trump suit and he gets irrelevant answers about the heart suit he is not particularly interested in just because it is coincidentally the suit of the ask.

So what again is the advantage of your method?

The request to ♦ (or ♥) is additional to all other requests (made in the classic RKB) and, therefore, independently, whether you are interested or not. So, if you have a specific interest in some other suit, you proceed, as we already know, by questioning directly. However, if you were interested in ♦ (or ♥), you would have already had a part of information (to be further supplemented with the re-interrogation, not included in the classic RKB) at the fifth level. These examples, taken from hands actually played, serve mainly to show how to proceed and what happens in the (first) declarative phase.

[Lovera]

This interesting hand sees in W Trezel while in S there is Finckenstein (European Championship in Copenhagen). The final contract was 6 ♠. If the RKB was used with my variant, the bidding would be S 4NT-5 ♦ (0-3), 5 ♥ (=?) - 5NT (positive answer in that suit: K). Not resolving the ambiguity 6 ♣ (=? Ks)-6 ♥ makes it clear that "the single Queen of trump" is not there since there is the King of ♥. In case there was also the King of ♦ (useful for a possible grand slam) then the bidding of 6♦ would have revealed that two reds Kings were present in the hand and all within the level of 6 ♠. The hand, missing the trump queen stops at the small slam.Opening lead: ♦ K.

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[Stephen Tu]

None of your examples support your cause. There is no advantage of your method over normal methods this hand.

With normal method, South knows missing trump Q at 5S level. This is important if South had hand with one fewer keycard, e.g. stiff heart and KQx of diamonds, for example. You get to stop in 5 missing AH and trump Q rather than having forced yourself to 6S going down more than half the time when you won't be able to play trump suit for no losers.Because North answering question (K of H) that irrelevant to South (who only care about AH + QS).
Meanwhile if south want to know about Q of S + any K, with normal method he ask Q and north deny:

• south can give up on grand immediately and just bid 6.
• If south had Q of spades already, he would not bid 5h but 5nt instead, and be able to find any of the 3 kings at 6 level.
• If North had Q of spades + king he can show any of them, not just HK

Also, in your method, if south query after 5nt 6c, what does north bid with:

• king of clubs, and not king of diamonds or K of H? Apparently you are reserving 6D/6H for showing that K. How can South ask for that king?
• both king of H and Q of spades?
• If north answer K of diamond, it's still ambiguous whether hold DK + Q of spade or DK + HK + no SQ or DK + HK + SQ. How can South ask? Clearly there is only one question left (6H) and two answers (6S or commit to grand), but 3 possibilities. This is bad. Perhaps South needs HK to commit to grand but 6H still asking only about SQ. So answer may put him in grand missing HK.

Your method seems fraught with problems and no apparent advantages. You are forcing South to repeat questions since the initial answer is ambiguous, and is chewing up extra space, instead of letting South just choose different question in the first place,asking only the questions he actually wants the answer to.

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-October-07, 09:33, said:

None of your examples support your cause. There is no advantage of your method over normal methods this hand.

With normal method, South knows missing trump Q at 5S level. This is important if South had hand with one fewer keycard, e.g. stiff heart and KQx of diamonds, for example. You get to stop in 5 missing AH and trump Q rather than having forced yourself to 6S going down more than half the time when you won't be able to play trump suit for no losers.Because North answering question (K of H) that irrelevant to South (who only care about AH + QS).
Meanwhile if south want to know about Q of S + any K, with normal method he ask Q and north deny:

• south can give up on grand immediately and just bid 6.
• If south had Q of spades already, he would not bid 5h but 5nt instead, and be able to find any of the 3 kings at 6 level.
• If North had Q of spades + king he can show any of them, not just HK

Also, in your method, if south query after 5nt 6c, what does north bid with:

• king of clubs, and not king of diamonds or K of H? Apparently you are reserving 6D/6H for showing that K. How can South ask for that king?
• both king of H and Q of spades?
• If north answer K of diamond, it's still ambiguous whether hold DK + Q of spade or DK + HK + no SQ or DK + HK + SQ. How can South ask? Clearly there is only one question left (6H) and two answers (6S or commit to grand), but 3 possibilities. This is bad. Perhaps South needs HK to commit to grand but 6H still asking only about SQ. So answer may put him in grand missing HK.

Your method seems fraught with problems and no apparent advantages. You are forcing South to repeat questions since the initial answer is ambiguous, and is chewing up extra space, instead of letting South just choose different question in the first place,asking only the questions he actually wants the answer to.

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding: when S has the answer of 6 ♦ indicating the King of ♦ he has the information of a King added to that of ♥ known with the previous answer (the choice was only between the Queen of trump that 5NT indicates alone or the possibility of having, alternatively, the King of the interrogation suit and these two suits only constituted the ambiguity, not ♦. The answer below the level of 6 ♠ indicates the two red Kings (♦ + ♥). To get the second King, with the classic RKB you have to re-query and you will have the positive answer but not under 6 ♠.

Meanwhile this way would be closer to being a graft. Rather than presenting a series of situations, I have chosen to introduce directly this concept of the ambiguous answer (involving, indeed, some necessary complication) which naturally must be resolved, if not resolved by itself, with these modalities, for which I am trying to give some example, as is usually done, to clarify and practice. This first part is preparatory for the re-interrogation, which completes, in another and different way (with relative answers) the detail of the investigated partner's hand.

[Stephen Tu]

Lovera, on 2019-October-07, 10:54, said:

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding: when S has the answer of 6 ♦ indicating the King of ♦ he has the information of a King added to that of ♥ known with the previous answer (the choice was only between the Queen of trump that 5NT indicates alone or the possibility of having, alternatively, the King of the interrogation suit and these two suits only constituted the ambiguity, not ♦.

But the K of H was *not* shown by the previous answer. 5nt showed *either* the HK or SQ (or both? Or does one answer with some other step e.g. 6c/6d/6S with both?)


So if 6D showed specifically DK+HK, how does one answer if North has DK+SQ? Something else presumably. What if South wanted to know about the DK + SQ, rather than DK + HK?

How would North show say CK + SQ?

Quote

To get the second King, with the classic RKB you have to re-query and you will have the positive answer but not under 6 ♠.

Why does this matter? With classic RKB, South knows about Q already by having it, or North has given positive response showing SQ + DK and denying CK. South if he wants the HK for grand in addition to this just bids 6H. 6S denies, you are fine. North bids something higher than 6S holding HK, you are also fine, because South wanted to be in grand opposite the HK. What's the problem here? Why do you need to be below 6S if you have what you need for grand?


Meanwhile your method seems to have lots of problem for showing CK+SQ or DK+SQ or queen + 2 kings on your sequence.

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-October-07, 11:37, said:

[/size]But the K of H was *not* shown by the previous answer. 5nt showed *either* the HK or SQ (or both? Or does one answer with some other step e.g. 6c/6d/6S with both?)

We say this: when you query for the Queen and you have the 5NT answer you know that it has no Kings aside. When you query directly in a suit(SpecificSuitAsking = SSA) to know what honors it has in that suit you can have a suit answer indicating the Queen (with the associated Ace) or NT indicating the King. 5NT is therefore used for these two cases and therefore given as an answer having two possibilities. Which of the two one will indicate the real situation, dissolving the ambiguity that is created? If you have one (or some) element in your hand, this clearly excludes an answer by making the other hypothesis valid. If not, as mentioned, you must proceed with 6 ♣ (=5NT substitute). Now if some King is indicated (not necessarily ♥) the Queen alone does not exist as an answer, confirming the other hypothesis of the King of ♥. Having also been indicated the King of ♦,than, this is added to the previously mentioned King of ♥.

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-October-07, 11:37, said:

Why does this matter? With classic RKB, South knows about Q already by having it, or North has given positive response showing SQ + DK and denying CK. South if he wants the HK for grand in addition to this just bids 6H. 6S denies, you are fine. North bids something higher than 6S holding HK, you are also fine, because South wanted to be in grand opposite the HK. What's the problem here? Why do you need to be below 6S if you have what you need for

It's just a quota problem: having already the information of the two Kings below the level of 6 ♠ you can manage it as you wish. Asking with 6 ♥ you will be oblidge to play for the grand slam.

[Stephen Tu]

Your second to last post is not comprehensible English.

Please answer the following questions clearly.
Let's suppose RKC asker has bid 4nt and answer was 5D. Spades are trumps.

1. Suppose RKC asker, South, has a hand, where he wants to be in slam opposite the trump queen (spades), but would rather stay in 5S without it. And does *not* have the HK, and doesn't particularly care if North has it or not (he has singleton H, and no useful loser to pitch on HK even if held). In your method, North bypasses 5S with either SQ or HK. That means you may in bad slam when South only cares about trump Q, and the HK is unhelpful. Off keycard and SQ, which is usually below par, and possibly nearly hopeless if missing the jack as well.

2. How can RKC bidder find out if North has the CK + SQ, below the level of 6S? Supposedly you bid 5h asking, North bids 5nt which is either HK or SQ. If South bids 6C this is a generic inquiry about kings. You have said 6D shows DK+HK (and no SQ?). What does 6H show? (Only HK, not DK, no SQ?). What does 6S show?

3. How does RKC answerer show BOTH HK AND SQ?

4. How does RKC answerer show DK and SQ, and no HK?
5. How does RKC answerer show DK + HK + SQ?
6. How does RKC answerer show CK + HK + SQ?
7. How does RKC answerer show CK + DK + SQ?




As for your second post, what is the problem of committing to grand slam opposite DK and HK? If South knows that HK is not enough for grand then he'll just sign off in 6S or 6nt and not ask about HK. He has all the info he needs, trump Q or not, not CK, DK, if he wants HK he can ask if it's useless he won't. Your method doesn't give any helpful extra information for the decision; it actually provides less in many circumstances.

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu, on 2019-October-07, 15:27, said:

Your second to last post is not comprehensible English.

Please answer the following questions clearly.
Let's suppose RKC asker has bid 4nt and answer was 5D. Spades are trumps.

1. Suppose RKC asker, South, has a hand, where he wants to be in slam opposite the trump queen (spades), but would rather stay in 5S without it. And does *not* have the HK, and doesn't particularly care if North has it or not (he has singleton H, and no useful loser to pitch on HK even if held). In your method, North bypasses 5S with either SQ or HK. That means you may in bad slam when South only cares about trump Q, and the HK is unhelpful. Off keycard and SQ, which is usually below par, and possibly nearly hopeless if missing the jack as well.

2. How can RKC bidder find out if North has the CK + SQ, below the level of 6S? Supposedly you bid 5h asking, North bids 5nt which is either HK or SQ. If South bids 6C this is a generic inquiry about kings. You have said 6D shows DK+HK (and no SQ?). What does 6H show? (Only HK, not DK, no SQ?). What does 6S show?

3. How does RKC answerer show BOTH HK AND SQ?

4. How does RKC answerer show DK and SQ, and no HK?
5. How does RKC answerer show DK + HK + SQ?
6. How does RKC answerer show CK + HK + SQ?
7. How does RKC answerer show CK + DK + SQ?




As for your second post, what is the problem of committing to grand slam opposite DK and HK? If South knows that HK is not enough for grand then he'll just sign off in 6S or 6nt and not ask about HK. He has all the info he needs, trump Q or not, not CK, DK, if he wants HK he can ask if it's useless he won't. Your method doesn't give any helpful extra information for the decision; it actually provides less in many circumstances.

(Sorry for the wait for a personal commitment). As for CK and DK the answer, if a player has the Queen of trump and one of the two Kings is not ambiguous the answer and therefore 6 ♣ / ♦ indicate, as usually the King indicated with the Queen. Therefore a second King can be discovered with the usual interrogative method. Concerning point 1) the answers are the same as the classic RKB with the informative addition of the "double negative" having Jxx or less also in the suit of the query for the Queen with response 5 of trump agree.

[Lovera]

Stephen Tu says:. If South bids 6C this is a generic inquiry about kings. You have said 6D shows DK+HK (and no SQ?) "My answer is yes".What does 6H show? (Only HK, not DK, no SQ?)"Again i say yes". What does 6S show? "In this case is shown the Queen of trump alone".

[Stephen Tu]

You didn't answer a bunch of my questions.

What is the answer to 5H query with HK+SQ?
You say 6c shows CK + SQ. Does it deny HK? What if answerer has HK+CK+SQ, what does he bid?


Your method randomly assigns importance to honors in the suit of the trump Q ask. Which is random, the Q ask is 5d over 5c and 5H over 5d. There's no logic that says RKC asker wants to know about honors in this suit just because it's randomly the next step over the 4nt answer. Whereas the trump Q is *always* important. So answering questions about HK (and apparently HQ as well? how? you say Jxx or less in this suit, how answer with say HQ and not SQ?) over 5H ask seems wasting space on an often irrelevant question. The normal method can inquire about heart honors directly after the more important trump Q information.

Your method may have opener chew up space showing HK and not knowing about hold SQ or not yet. And asker only care about SQ, and this interfere if he want to know about CK + SQ.

In your method, apparently it goes 4nt-5d-5h-5nt-6c-6s, to find out that answerer has trump Q and no outside kings. Compare to normal method, 4nt-5d-5h-5nt, you are 3 steps lower with the same info, and can now ask about third round controls in any suit.