[jdiana]

mikeh, on 2025-January-25, 12:08, said:

Minorwood is right up there (with mini-roman) as an abomination of a convention.

LOL

Experts all seem to hate it. I appreciate you giving your reasons, rather than just telling me it stinks. For someone at my level, it just seems easier to remember than the alternatives and I always feel that some agreement is better than none.

Rod Roark mentions "Optional Minorwood" quite frequently on BW and has written this on his blog - https://in-oz.com/br...topic.php?t=417 Sounds like the same concept as optional keycard.

If I ever get back to playing again and find a partner willing to work on agreements, I'll have to dig into it again. I never really got to the point where we had adopted any special minor suit slam tools last time. I just had a couple of these things, including Minorwood, on my wish list.

Thanks for the explanation!

[akwoo]

The reason people play Minorwood rather than Kickback is that Minorwood is much less accident-prone. Real-life non-experts have to take into account a substantial probability that partner will forget agreements, particularly when they're complicated. Figuring out whether 4♥ is natural or Kickback is a minefield in many auctions and can't really be resolved without rules that will frequently be misremembered.

I had a chat a couple days ago with the first-time partner I'll be playing with next weekend at the local (i.e. only 85 miles away) Sectional. If it goes reasonably well we might end up playing maybe 10 sessions a year. Are we going to play Kickback? He didn't suggest it, but my response would've been "I have played it, but oh hell no for an infrequent partnership." I would've been willing to play Minorwood.

[mw64ahw]

I'm a fan of Kickbo which is the 'Kickback' equivalent of Turbo simply because it allows keycard/control showing before the 5-level so you can exit there or add to your trick count for potential grands.

[jdiana]

mikeh, on 2025-January-25, 12:08, said:

Minorwood is right up there (with mini-roman) as an abomination of a convention.

There is a method that is somewhat distantly related to minorwood that, imo, is very useful. It’s called ‘optional keycard’ and applies in limited auctions. In my experience, including seeing examples of others who play it, it’s reserved for auctions in which opener has shown a very strong balanced hand….as in opening 2N or 2C then 2N. See my earlier post about how we’d use it in one of my partnerships

I gave what is a typical sequence. Basically over 2N responder uses stayman (imaging opener held KQXx Ax in the reds….you’d want to play in hearts because hearts scores better than diamonds. Make it KQxxx Ax and it’s even clearer…..so responder should stayman. Obviously that’s not possible if you have to respond to 2C by showing diamonds, which is why we don’t show our long suit when holding a two suited or 3 suited hand.

2C 2D 2N 3C 3S 4D……4D shows 5+ diamonds and interest in something other than 3N. Optional keycard means that opener’s bids are:

4H 1st step. Has a diamond fit but a real minimum hand, in context. 4S 2nd step shows 4 keycards (playing 1430….obviously can’t have just 1) and a good hand for diamonds. 4N…4N is always regressive…almost always a doubleton diamond. 5C shows 3 keycards. 5D shows 5 keycards, no queen…..it won’t be 2 keycards….you simply can’t construct a 2N let alone a 2C then 2N hand that is diamond positive with only 2 keycards. 5H shows 5 keycards and the queen….don’t hold your breath on these last two responses.

The point is that minorwood doesn’t allow opener to do anything but make robotic keycard responses, leaving responder with no idea whether opener’s hand is good for diamonds or not. Imagine responder has KJxxxx in diamonds. He finds out that his side has all the keycards but is missing the queen. Does opener hold Ax…..where you’re odds on to lose a trump trick and might lose two on a bad day. Or Axxx where you’d have to be unlucky to lose even one, and can’t lose two?


Any keycard ask that takes place BEFORE finding out whether opener has a fit is silly….basically it should be restricted to an extremely rare scenario where asker doesn’t care. Say KQJxxxx.

What makes it particularly weird that anyone plays minorwood is that there are very effective alternatives. Optional keycard is one. Kickback is another. I’m not sufficiently familiar with Turbo to know how it stacks up but some truly great players use it.

This might be a dumb question but, if playing optional keycard (or optional Minorwood), are there any guidelines for when the "teller" would give the "bad hand" response? We have some rules about when NOT to make a fast arrival bid (e.g., never if we have 3 KCs or 2KCs and the trump queen). Any similar rules of thumb in this situation?

[mikeh]

jdiana, on 2025-January-26, 10:56, said:

This might be a dumb question but, if playing optional keycard (or optional Minorwood), are there any guidelines for when the "teller" would give the "bad hand" response? We have some rules about when NOT to make a fast arrival bid (e.g., never if we have 3 KCs or 2KCs and the trump queen). Any similar rules of thumb in this situation?

We don’t have explicit rules. But the two players with whom I play this are multi-time internationalists and extremely good players. The sequences arise rarely but I’m confident that all three of us would agree 95% or more of the time. Sorry to be so vague but the best I can do is give you my ‘rules of thumb’ for when a 20 count is ‘good’ or a 21 count is ‘bad’….assuming we opened 2N, 20-21. The same rules would apply to a 22-24 range.

Firstly, for the 20-21 range, the actual point count is the least important factor. There are truly great 20 counts and not very good 21 counts, in context. Indeed, we upgrade into these ranges quite often and I’ve had a 21 count, upgraded into 2C then 2N, that I then went on to see as a maximum!

For slam purposes, controls are extremely important so hands with aces and kings, rather than queens and jacks are good…the converse is also true.

Fit is important. Axx would be nice but Axxx even better. Shape helps. Give me good trump and a side holding such as Ax and I like it give me 4333 shape and I tend to dislike it.

It’s always important to understand that if you’ve shown 20-21, holding 20 hcp doesn’t automatically mean that you’ve got a good hand. This is, from what I’ve seen, a very common problem for many players. Every time they hold a big hand, they overbid. They seem unable to trust partner. Once you’ve shown 20-21 by opening 2N, you should trust partner to play you for 2o-21 and start thinking in terms of how well this hand looks within the context of the auction. Do my cards mesh well with the hand partner is describing? Yes? Then accept invitations, cooperate etc. No? Then make a regressive bid. Don’t panic….partner knows you hold 20-21 and he can drive to slam over your regressive bid if his hand warrants doing so.

Now, learning how to do this valuation and, even more importantly, learning how both you and partner can trust each other is not easy. It requires work, including (if this is new to you) asking about it and, if you’re lucky enough to have real experts to whom you can talk, seeking advice. BBF is a poor substitute….we have quite a few voices willing to offer opinions but they represent a wide range of levels of expertise and it can’t be easy for the non expert to figure out who to listen to.

Edit: don’t over-read that last part. There are several posters here whose opinions I respect. Should I disagree with one or more of them, I’m well aware that their views might be better than mine. But, for example and not intending to suggest these three are the only ones (I’ve just woken up, not yet had coffee and aren’t trying to limit my list) if DavidKok or awm or Stephen Tu disagree with me, I pay attention. I may or may not change my mind but I’m definitely not ignoring (edited to correct iPad autofill) their views.

[akwoo]

mikeh, on 2025-January-26, 11:29, said:

jdiana, on 2025-January-26, 10:56, said:

This might be a dumb question but, if playing optional keycard (or optional Minorwood), are there any guidelines for when the "teller" would give the "bad hand" response? We have some rules about when NOT to make a fast arrival bid (e.g., never if we have 3 KCs or 2KCs and the trump queen). Any similar rules of thumb in this situation?

We don’t have explicit rules. But the two players with whom I play this are multi-time internationalists and extremely good players. The sequences arise rarely but I’m confident that all three of us would agree 95% or more of the time. Sorry to be so vague but the best I can do is give you my ‘rules of thumb’ for when a 20 count is ‘good’ or a 21 count is ‘bad’….assuming we opened 2N, 20-21. The same rules would apply to a 22-24 range.

I think it's worth reasoning back from the dumb answer here.

"Good" should mean that you will make a slam assuming you have enough keycards.

4N should be (at least at IMPs) reserved for the situations where 5D might not make.

4H should be everything else.

Now, that means opener (who is responding to the optional minorwood) needs to know what responder should have to bid optional minorwood, and the ability to use that information to determine if slam would be on.

I'm just barely good enough to claim to have the latter, but if you don't have it, that's a good reason not to play this treatment.

As for the former, you need an agreement, probably implicit. There is some mathematically optimal agreement, in the sense that responder should be using optional minorwood if x% of 2N openers will make 5D or 6D, but no one is agreeing on x and doing a simulation in their head at their table; they're just using their judgement.

I've been doing a lot of defending bad bridge recently, so I may as well continue. It's clear to me from these considerations that this kind of agreement is only for regular partnerships of two experts, because you're only going to get the benefit of it if you have a good deal of partnership experience as well as good judgement on both ends.

Good for mikeh, but most of the rest of us just aren't in that situation.

Now back to the usual trying not to give away a trick every 4 boards, never mind the bidding... (failed to duck a trick to rectify the count (well at least if the robot doesn't find the right lead after that) on one of the Intobridge daily expert challenges today...)

[mikeh]

akwoo, on 2025-January-26, 18:24, said:

I think it's worth reasoning back from the dumb answer here.

"Good" should mean that you will make a slam assuming you have enough keycards.

4N should be (at least at IMPs) reserved for the situations where 5D might not make.

4H should be everything else.

Now, that means opener (who is responding to the optional minorwood) needs to know what responder should have to bid optional minorwood, and the ability to use that information to determine if slam would be on.

I'm just barely good enough to claim to have the latter, but if you don't have it, that's a good reason not to play this treatment.

As for the former, you need an agreement, probably implicit. There is some mathematically optimal agreement, in the sense that responder should be using optional minorwood if x% of 2N openers will make 5D or 6D, but no one is agreeing on x and doing a simulation in their head at their table; they're just using their judgement.

I've been doing a lot of defending bad bridge recently, so I may as well continue. It's clear to me from these considerations that this kind of agreement is only for regular partnerships of two experts, because you're only going to get the benefit of it if you have a good deal of partnership experience as well as good judgement on both ends.

Good for mikeh, but most of the rest of us just aren't in that situation.

Now back to the usual trying not to give away a trick every 4 boards, never mind the bidding... (failed to duck a trick to rectify the count (well at least if the robot doesn't find the right lead after that) on one of the Intobridge daily expert challenges today...)

Sorry, I think you have it backwards

Opener is in no position to think ‘we have slam if we have enough keycards’. While opener, with a good hand in context, does show keycards, it’s not up to him whether ‘we may have slam’. As a narrowly constrained hand, he cannot assume captaincy. The 4m bid by responder is not a slam try….it’s an attempt to reach the correct contract. Responder may have slam interest or ambitions but he is the one who knows that. For now, all he’s doing is bidding his hand.