[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2026-September-17, 12:08, said:

I'm not happy making a heart cue with KQ

"Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos".

You're in that embarassing limbo between NA style of Ace showing cue inviting RKCB plus Last Train and Italian style combined first-second level control-bids plus Turbo.
I suggest you fully embrace one or the other
If your priority is to be club compatible then stick to the former for a decade or so.

[WasWinM]

1H-1S
2H-3D
3S-4C
4H-4NT
5C-5D
6S-P

I would think this would be my approach. BTW, I've played 4NT in this sequence a number of different ways. Here, for simplicity, I'm calling it Keycard 1430. The one thing I never did is use it as a sign off in 4NT once a fit had been found and we were in a cue-bidding auction. (For anyone curious, I've used it as Culbertson 4N-5N convention, which was surprisingly good, and also as a general movement towards slam bid.)

[WasWinM]

jillybean, on 2026-September-17, 12:08, said:

I was looking at my 5♥ bid here, I'm not going to change my partners keycard approach.
Having played the hand, I can't honestly say what I would do with west cards.

Please show me a "normal" auction here
The discussions on forums is not what is going on at the clubs.

---

I'm not happy making a heart cue with KQ

PS. If you can't show the heart card you shouldn't get to slam. Jx, Q109xxx

[jillybean]

WasWinM, on 2026-September-17, 14:56, said:

1H-1S
2H-3D
3S-4C
4H-4NT
5C-5D
6S-P

I would think this would be my approach. BTW, I've played 4NT in this sequence a number of different ways. Here, for simplicity, I'm calling it Keycard 1430. The one thing I never did is use it as a sign off in 4NT once a fit had been found and we were in a cue-bidding auction. (For anyone curious, I've used it as Culbertson 4N-5N convention, which was surprisingly good, and also as a general movement towards slam bid.)

---

Why do you jump to 6♠?

WasWinM, on 2026-September-17, 14:58, said:

PS. If you can't show the heart card you shouldn't get to slam. Jx, Q109xxx

Yes, I can and would show the heart King but having bid the suit twice already, I would rather have a heart cue showing the Ace

[mikeh]

pescetom, on 2026-September-17, 14:51, said:

"Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos".

You're in that embarassing limbo between NA style of Ace showing cue inviting RKCB plus Last Train and Italian style combined first-second level control-bids plus Turbo.
I suggest you fully embrace one or the other
If your priority is to be club compatible then stick to the former for a decade or so.

I don’t think there’s a good player left who doesn’t readily cuebid 1st and 2nd round controls interchangeably. I know it’s still called Italian style cuebids but it’s pretty universal these days and has been for many years. I’ve got every Bridge World back to the late 1960s ( and many earlier) so I think I’m familiar with expert trends over the past 60 years. I’ve not played turbo but I’ve also not seen many, if any, hands from major events where a turbo pair used the gadget to get a result that the other table missed due to playing keycard. Not saying it’s not good….just saying it’s not noticeably better.

[jillybean]

So why is my partner bidding Keycard and not cuebidding? He's not a slouch and has consistently decent results, one of the better club/sectional players.

Maybe that answers my question, technique rubs off, for better or worse.

[DavidKok]

 jillybean, on 2026-September-18, 08:37, said:

So why is my partner bidding Keycard and not cuebidding? He's not a slouch and has consistently decent results, one of the better club/sectional players.

Maybe that answers my question, technique rubs off, for better or worse.

Painful as it may be, probably because your partner doesn't know any better.

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2026-September-17, 14:51, said:

"Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos".

You're in that embarassing limbo between NA style of Ace showing cue inviting RKCB plus Last Train and Italian style combined first-second level control-bids plus Turbo.
I suggest you fully embrace one or the other
If your priority is to be club compatible then stick to the former for a decade or so.

I have played Italian-style cues for a while now, albeit poorly perhaps, but contrary to MikeH's comment, it's not at all common in clubs — or perhaps not many good players play in clubs any longer?
I posted recently about a player who was aggrieved that my cue was not a void.

[pescetom]

 jillybean, on 2026-September-19, 00:05, said:

I have played Italian-style cues for a while now, albeit poorly perhaps, but contrary to MikeH's comment, it's not at all common in clubs — or perhaps not many good players play in clubs any longer?
I posted recently about a player who was aggrieved that my cue was not a void.

I suspect the truth is that there are not many good players any longer, period. The number of clubs has declined, but not as quickly. There is a phenomenon of critical mass in a club, once the majority of tables have no good player the overall level soon crumbles. It's frightening to observe the difference between our beginners and those coming from healthier clubs in the major cities.

As for Italian style control bidding, it's only common among the competitive players here and only a few of those go the whole hog with some flavour of Turbo. Most club players will say "we should have cuebid this" but in practice just lean on the wretched crutch of Blackwood.

[jillybean]

Locally, there's a cohort of very good players — they don't play at the clubs, and who can blame them. I agree with the rest of your comments.

I have not looked at Turbo - sounds like fun.

[akwoo]

pescetom, on 2026-September-19, 02:24, said:

I suspect the truth is that there are not many good players any longer, period. The number of clubs has declined, but not as quickly. There is a phenomenon of critical mass in a club, once the majority of tables have no good player the overall level soon crumbles. It's frightening to observe the difference between our beginners and those coming from healthier clubs in the major cities.

I've seen a couple times a different critical mass phenomenon, which is that once the majority of tables have a good player, weaker players stop playing in the club, making the remaining players on average stronger, driving even more weaker players out, and the club soon becomes no longer viable.

[pescetom]

akwoo, on 2026-September-19, 13:54, said:

I've seen a couple times a different critical mass phenomenon, which is that once the majority of tables have a good player, weaker players stop playing in the club, making the remaining players on average stronger, driving even more weaker players out, and the club soon becomes no longer viable.

Odd, but possible. Probably linked to bullying by the stronger players I would imagine, plus non sanctioned alternatives for the weaker players. When I first joined a sanctioned club fifteen years ago things were almost at this level (and had been for two decades), with a group of arrogant and prize money hungry "good" players abusing and deriding the rest. A combination of events including my decision to become TD and the arrival of Covid allowed us to competely overthrow that situation, but I can imagine that it was not unique, although I've only encountered it in one other club since then.

[jillybean]

akwoo, on 2026-September-19, 13:54, said:

I've seen a couple times a different critical mass phenomenon, which is that once the majority of tables have a good player, weaker players stop playing in the club, making the remaining players on average stronger, driving even more weaker players out, and the club soon becomes no longer viable.

Has anyone asked why the weaker players stop playing?

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2026-September-19, 14:31, said:

Has anyone asked why the weaker players stop playing?

My answer after my first evening as an enthusiastic beginner at the sanctioned club would have been very simple, and I was dangerously close to giving up the game right then.
"My partner didn't seem interested in helping me to learn or sympathetic to my difficulties. His objectives seemed to be to win a prize and/or to ridicule me.
I gave up when he scorned me in front of the opponents for having conceded a ruff/sluff, without even explaining to me what that meant and why it was a bad idea."

I decided to continue and since then I have played a lot of bad bridge, but never lacked in respect or encouragement to a beginner partner.

[akwoo]

jillybean, on 2026-September-19, 14:31, said:

Has anyone asked why the weaker players stop playing?

Rudeness wasn't a problem in either case. I know for at least one person it was just that the other players were too good and they felt they had no chance to break average, or even ever improving to the point where they could. It felt like a waste of an evening to just keep getting zeros because you can't count out declarer's hand well enough to find the right lead at trick 9 to prevent the overtrick, and everyone else can (and you're a 70 year old retiree who has played for ten years and knows your brain will never learn to track that much information). Fixing the errors that they could understand would barely improve their score. Having to play against strong clubbers or weak NTers might have been a contributing factor.

Mind you - this was a game that had dwindled to 3-4 tables, in which I was frequently the weakest player (and the next weakest players are regularly that district's GNT Flight B representatives). It has since recovered a bit, partly because there are slightly more younger ambitious players around.

[mike777]

Just played today in the District GNP B

[WasWinM]

jillybean, on 2026-September-18, 07:20, said:

---

Why do you jump to 6♠?


Yes, I can and would show the heart King but having bid the suit twice already, I would rather have a heart cue showing the Ace

I jump to 6 spades because partner asked for the Q and I have it. Maybe others would bid 5H but I don't see the need once it's been cue bid.
Hold Jx, you have to get at least a K cuebid or there is no slam to bid. Without a heart cuebid there isn't a keycard bid, we're playing 4S making 5.