[jillybean]

Even I wouldn't give partner space and bid 2♦

---

[mike777]

Prefer 4C the first time, set trump
Partner now can bid 4D KB
I can respond 5C, if all keycards then
Now 5D specific kings
5NT= KD, deny KH and KS

[jillybean]

That's not how the auction went but funny you mention KB, my partner said we should be playing KB and there were a few hands tonight where it would have been useful.
Perhaps it's time to dust off my KB notes.

[DavidKok]

Kickback is one of the few conventions I refuse to play. I think it's not only bad, but also a trap that looks deceptively shiny.

4♠ over 3♥, showing a heart raise with spade control to go with my clubs. I'm always scared when partner opens 2♣ and I have this much - usually it means partner should have opened 1♥.

[paulg]

4♣ for me, it is too early to commit to playing in hearts with three small.

I like Kickback in my main partnership because we've spent the hours, days, months and years discussing when it applies. I would not play it with an expert partner without weeks of discussion.

[jillybean]

Sorry, I should have mentioned, your partner is aggressive but you can expect 6 card heart suit and a 2♣ style opening here.

I don't know what I would bid over 4♠, I (west) would not recognize it was a heart raise. It is these types of auctions where if that had happened I would feel stuck for a bid and use an ill conceived keycard ask.

---

1430

Paul, I remember a few disasters during my last foray into KB and how much discussion I should have had.
These TG's are a regular, fun event on BBO with local experts and wannabes. Discussion in allowed and would be a good place to dust off KB
David, I think a new thread on KB is on order.

edit: i will ask partner of they have detailed KB notes

[mike777]

Good grief if that is how the bidding is going

Feel as if I am in a disaster movie
Remember the Towering inferno?
Earthquake?
The Poseidan Adventure

[jillybean]

mike777, on 2026-June-28, 07:08, said:

Good grief if that is how the bidding is going

Feel as if I am in a disaster movie
Remember the Towering inferno?
Earthquake?
The Poseidan Adventure

The auction is just as thrilling.

[mikeh]

jillybean, on 2026-June-28, 06:58, said:

Sorry, I should have mentioned, your partner is aggressive but you can expect 6 card heart suit and a 2♣ style opening here.

I don't know what I would bid over 4♠, I (west) would not recognize it was a heart raise. It is these types of auctions where if that had happened I would feel stuck for a bid and use an ill conceived keycard ask.

---

1430

Paul, I remember a few disasters during my last foray into KB and how much discussion I should have had.
These TG's are a regular, fun event on BBO with local experts and wannabes. Discussion in allowed and would be a good place to dust off KB
David, I think a new thread on KB is on order.

What else could 4S be? If you agree to play kickback, firstly you need a well-defined set of rules, but that doesn’t mean complicated rules. Unlike David, I think KB is an excellent convention: IFF (which means if and only if) you have good rules.

One of our rules is that KB takes priority over splinters, which is the only other logical meaning I could think of for 4S. Please don’t tell me your partner would think it was natural.

As for what I’d bid…I literally can’t think of anything other than keycard…and if you have agreed on kb, then that has to be 4S. If you have agreed KB, 4N is exclusion in spades!

Assuming you got a 14 response, clearly it’s 4, and you may as well bid 7N. You could ask for the queen but if he doesn’t have it he surely has stuff in the pointed suits to give you 13 winners. AQx AKxxxx AJx x isn’t even close to a 2C opening bid. AQJ AKJxxx AJx x could qualify but that’s literally a unique hand and we’d have all kinds of chances for 13 tricks.

[mycroft]

Mike, what are your rules for "both suits" (primarily diamonds-hearts and hearts-spades), if I may ask?

[mikeh]

mycroft, on 2026-June-28, 11:06, said:

Mike, what are your rules for "both suits" (primarily diamonds-hearts and hearts-spades), if I may ask?

1S 2H 3H 3S. 3S is a cuebid…A or King (never make your first cuebid in a primary suit held by partner a shortness control. x opposite AQJxx is of little help for slam…Kx is huge)

I don’t think that there is yet an expert consensus, in NA, about this but the ‘3S is a cuebid’ seems to be growing in popularity. I had the pleasure of playing a little on a team with Hampson and Korbel recently and that’s one of the few topics Korbel and I discussed in our 5 min system discussion….we only played two matches together…and he is in the cuebid school.my main partner and I switched to cuebid some 4 years ago. Before then it was a 6 card keycard situation.

Diamonds and hearts….in my KB partnership we play a complicated structure after our unbalanced 1D opening bid, so I can’t think of an auction in which we’d have confusion. But if responder shows hearts in response to 1D, and later jumps unilaterally to 4H, that would be to play. We would need to have set diamonds as trump before 4H would be KB. We have some implied suit agreements in some esoteric sequences but not after 1D. We play various relays and in those sequences, which are always where responder artificially forced to game at his first call, any time responder bids a suit at the 4 level it’s:

4C puppets to 4H, preparatory to signing off….this lets opener, with a max for the bidding so far, to bid 4D rather than accept the puppet
4D is KB in clubs even if responder hasn’t yet shown clubs…responder is usually relaying rather than showing suits
4H is KB in diamonds,
4S KB in hearts
4N keycard in spades.


This is after either a 10-13 1N with an artificial 2D relay or after 1C 1N, where we play 1N as a balanced or semi balanced 14+…could be 13 if nv, since opener will usually have 14+ (no 1N bid)

[jillybean]

mikeh, on 2026-June-28, 09:30, said:

What else could 4S be?

We are in a gf auction partner has shown their club suit. No suit agreed, yet.
I show hearts, partner jumps in spades. Yes, it must be a splinter cue in support of hearts. We had not agreed to play KB, no, neither of us would think it was natural.

---

Now its easy , we had agreed on specific kings

[DavidKok]

mikeh, on 2026-June-28, 09:30, said:

If you agree to play kickback, firstly you need a well-defined set of rules, but that doesn’t mean complicated rules. Unlike David, I think KB is an excellent convention: IFF (which means if and only if) you have good rules.

I do not agree. I've run into dozens of Kickback accidents at international and world class level (I was a spectator), while around me people were kindly explaining that 'at this level they do not have Kickback accidents anymore, their rules are too clear and the players are too good'. Meanwhile, the upside of the convention is a parlay bet - the extra space needs to matter, which it sometimes does, and the cue bid needs to not resolve the slam ambitions anyway, which it sometimes fails to do. My lifetime count of 'number of slams correctly found/avoided thanks to Kickback but gone wrong without' is far far lower than my lifetime count of 'number of stupid Kickback accidents that cost the whole board at once'.
Additionally, I have a number of bad experiences with partners prematurely jumping just to make sure I would understand that this time it's Kickback. Of course this also shouldn't happen, but it does.

I think in a vacuum it's a good convention, but in practice it's a trap. I play more conventions than most and more complicated ones than most, and Kickback has a clear negative impact on my score and the people around me that play it. I'm sure with enough practice they would get past the mistakes, but it's so rare that it gains anyway (ironically, especially in the minor suits) that you need a lot of decades of flawless Kickback to make up for a few accidents while learning.

[mikeh]

DavidKok, on 2026-June-28, 12:00, said:

I do not agree. I've run into dozens of Kickback accidents at international and world class level (I was a spectator), while around me people were kindly explaining that 'at this level they do not have Kickback accidents anymore, their rules are too clear and the players are too good'. Meanwhile, the upside of the convention is a parlay bet - the extra space needs to matter, which it sometimes does, and the cue bid needs to not resolve the slam ambitions anyway, which it sometimes fails to do. My lifetime count of 'number of slams correctly found/avoided thanks to Kickback but gone wrong without' is far far lower than my lifetime count of 'number of stupid Kickback accidents that cost the whole board at once'.
Additionally, I have a number of bad experiences with partners prematurely jumping just to make sure I would understand that this time it's Kickback. Of course this also shouldn't happen, but it does.

I think in a vacuum it's a good convention, but in practice it's a trap. I play more conventions than most and more complicated ones than most, and Kickback has a clear negative impact on my score and the people around me that play it. I'm sure with enough practice they would get past the mistakes, but it's so rare that it gains anyway (ironically, especially in the minor suits) that you need a lot of decades of flawless Kickback to make up for a few accidents while learning.

Hey, if that’s your experience, so be it. It’s not mine. Yes, we did have a couple of misunderstandings in the first few months we played KB but that was years ago. We’re a partnership that spends a LOT of time on system and I do not recall any ‘accidents’ over the past few years.

I’m not sure why you think the loss of a cuebid is much of an issue. While it is occasionally slightly awkward, 2hennone plays KB, 4N becomes the ‘cuebid’ in the KB suit.

Every convention has its costs, and KB is no exception but a lot of good players like it. The fact that you’ve had partners screw it up says much more about what I infer is a lack of detailed agreements than about the merits of the convention.

I definitely would not play it without lots of discussion unless it was an unimportant event but that’s true of a lot of the stuff I play.

[DavidKok]

I'm saying that I've had very strong players give me this exact spiel and then lose matches to Kickback accidents. I'm happy you haven't had any, but please don't put it all on my former partners.

The comment about the cuebid is that sometimes we make the correct slam decision when using the cuebid. It being cheaper is very relevant - the RKC bid being cheaper is the whole reason for considering Kickback. I also don't play Exclusion, for similar reasons. In my experience a good fraction of the time that these gadgets would be perfect, we still get there by making cheap cue bids and robust inferences. Kickback only picks up the additional tough deals, and that's very rare.

[pescetom]

DavidKok, on 2026-June-28, 13:42, said:

I'm saying that I've had very strong players give me this exact spiel and then lose matches to Kickback accidents. I'm happy you haven't had any, but please don't put it all on my former partners.

The comment about the cuebid is that sometimes we make the correct slam decision when using the cuebid. It being cheaper is very relevant - the RKC bid being cheaper is the whole reason for considering Kickback. I also don't play Exclusion, for similar reasons. In my experience a good fraction of the time that these gadgets would be perfect, we still get there by making cheap cue bids and robust inferences. Kickback only picks up the additional tough deals, and that's very rare.

Late to this burning discussion, but FWIW I am close to your position although not coincident.
As you said previously, Kickback is both more useful and less dangerous with minors: even then I will no longer sacrifice control-bidding for it, but when it is possible to reconcile the two (a jump to 4m+1 is Kickback, 4m is forcing and invites control-bid) then I do so.
There are also some higher level conventions where kickback for minor (or other minor to rightside) is the least of all evils, IMO.

[pescetom]

mike777, on 2026-June-27, 23:27, said:

Prefer 4C the first time, set trump

Getting back to the OP, FWIW I think "standard" methods here are shoddy.
I strongly dislike the idea that Responder to a strong 2♣ can set trump (!), but also that he can bid his suit in my spokes at 3 level.
As we play, he would bid 2♠ showing an undefined strong suit of his own and now it is up to me what to do.
If I'm interested or balanced I will bid 2NT over which he bids his suit in transfer.
If not then I (the strong opener) set trump and at 3 level.

[mike777]

All fair points, this certainly is a rare hand type but it has come up a couple of times.

Both times not playing KB.

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2026-June-28, 15:00, said:

As we play, he would bid 2♠ showing an undefined strong suit of his own and now it is up to me what to do.

Interesting, but again only suitable for a regular, highly committed, dedicated partnership.
We've got to do the best we can with minimal agreements.

[akwoo]

This is one bidding sequence where I think Kickback is actually less ambiguous.

If playing Kickback, I would consider 4♠ unambiguously Kickback. Responder does not bid 3♣ holding a 2 suited hand.

If not playing Kickback, I would not find 4N unambiguously Blackwood (of whatever form). I would think 4N might very well be a hand inviting slam in NT, say Kx xx QJx KQxxxx