Kickback Turbo
Since Fantoni-Nunes use Turbo for their slam investigations, many people wonder what it is exactly, and how it works. Short: it is a cuebidding method, where skipping the 4NT bid means you have an odd number of keycards, while bidding 4NT shows an even number of keycards (similar principle like serious 3NT). There are a lot of different situations where Turbo can be bid lower (like when a fit is established at the 2-level, 3NT will usually be the "Turbo-bid") but this doesn't change much to the method. Usually it's clear how many keycards your partner has exactly because of the auction. Finding the trump Queen is done in several ways. Usually you can just continue cuebidding and suddenly stop at 5-level. Now your partner knows you were looking for the Queen, otherwise you'd just signoff immediately. Another way is to bid 5NT, asking partner to bid grand slam if he holds the trump Q.
I've noticed there are some problems with the normal method, and I'm not sure how Fantunes cope with that. For example, if you set ♣ as trump with 4♣, you can't figure out if partner has the ♣Q when you are at the Turbo-stage. A simple auction, typical for their system:
1♦ - 3♠
4♣ - 4♥!
4♠! - 4NT*
???
3♠ shows 10-14 with 5+♠ and 5+♣
4♣ sets trump
! is cuebid
* is an even number of keycards
Opener can't know for sure to go past 5♣ with a keycard missing and not holding the ♣Q. Responder can't go past 5♣ because they might be missing 2 keycards.
The problem is typical for ♣ fits, and sometimes comes up with ♦ fits as well, if you can't bid a ♣ cue in between.
Me and one of my f2f partners have found a solution to this problem: we play Kickback Turbo. It uses the same principle but other bids to skip:
- With a ♣ fit: 4♦
- With a ♦ fit: 4♥
- With a ♥ fit: 4♠
- With a ♠ fit: 4NT
4NT becomes the cuebid in whatever suit the Turbo-bid was. So in our auction from above, we get:
1♦ - 3♠
4♣ - 4♦*
4♥! - 4♠!
4NT! - ?
Now, since opener kept cuebidding after knowing the number of keycards, responder should go past 5♣ if he holds the ♣Q, because opener was still looking for slam. If responder bids 5♣ he denies the ♣Q and opener can make the right decision.
We use some other slam tools as well. Once we have set trumps, we have 3 main stages:
- serious or no serious slam interest
- number of keycards (odd / even) = Turbo
- looking for trump Q
Whenever we're at a pretty low level, all these bids go down a bit. We use following bids whenever they are available: 2NT, 3 trumps, 3NT, Kickback-Turbo-bid, 5NT. So for example, if you set trumps with 2♠:
- 2NT is frivolous, no serious slam interest
- 3♠ = Turbo
- 3NT denies the ♠Q
if you set trumps with 3♠:
- 3NT is frivolous
- 4NT is Turbo
- 5NT asks the ♠Q
Kickback Turbo doesn't have an immediate disadvantage imo. It is more difficult sometimes, because you have to think about the cuebids in another order (if partner skips the Turbo-bid, it doesn't mean he doesn't have a cue in that suit, you have to wait until you hear 4NT or not). Once you get used to it, you don't make mistakes against that anymore.
The advantage is clear: you show your number of keycards lower, and can more easily investigate about the trump Q. By using this method, you don't even lose any cuebids before the critical level!
6 reactions:
Have you considered using Kickback for the queen ask as well?
5D when clubs are trump
5H when diamonds are trump
5S when hearts are trump
5N when spades are trump
No, for several reasons:
- it makes things more complicated, and it's useless to do so imo.
- the need of staying low is not that big because we already have a good knowledge what the limit of the hand will be.
- most of the time we already know if partner holds the Queen by the time we go past the "5 trump"-bid (like in the example given, if you don't pass 5T you don't have the Queen).
When you know the number of keycards, the Queen is just an extra bonus to go to slam with only a keycard missing, or staying out of slams when you miss the Queen as well. Looking for the Q with 5NT is usually looking for grand slam, so you have enough space. :-) There's no need in making silly mistakes at high level, so why make it more complicated...
My worry about using 4X+1 as Turbo is that sometimes partner will want to return to the trump suit to indicate that he doesn't think that there are enough keycards present. If it turns out that you had two more keycards than he anticipated then you've just lost an entire level of bidding.
You have a valid point here. Note that this is a general problem of playing any form of Turbo: if you have a Spade fit, partner can rebid 5S and lose an entire level. Kickback doesn't change this, but increases the possibility with a fit in the other suits.
Luckily, the frequency of this problem is VERY low! By the time we start with cuebidding, we usually have a good indication of HCP, distribution from partner's hand and seriousness of the slamtry. This means we also know how many keycards we may expect in partner's hand. So if you were looking for slam, you get 2 keycards missing from your point of view, partner with 2 extra keycards should/will bid again. Do we still have to look for grand slam now? I guess most of the time we don't, but I have to admit it can still come up when we have distributional hands.
Comparing the frequency where you need to find the trump Q for slam opposite the frequency where you're looking for a grand slam with less than 33HCP and you expect partner to have 2 keycards short, I think Kickback Turbo is definitely the better version of Turbo.
Free-ster,
Question: do you use denial cuebidding with your Turbo?
No, we use normal cuebids (1st or 2nd round controls) combined with "Last Train" when partner skipped a cue. I haven't tried to play denial cuebids here, and I don't feel the need actually. We haven't found many problem hands so far for the system, it's not worth it to change it for these few hands... :-)
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