[straube]

So we're using a parity scan method that awm gave us. We find out relay points and then even/odd for top 3 honors of each suit, then show whether our first odd suit contains the king. Trouble is that we often wind up at 5D or 5H by the time we're done. Is scanning for jacks really worth giving up the ability to sign off in the relay step? I think we might ask more often, if we knew we were likely to be able to play in this relay step.

[kenrexford]

http://www.evertonfc...9/scan-for-jack

Apparently, a few things can be said about scanning for Jacks.

First, this might be related to groin injuries.

Second, and very strangely, Rodwell is involved. This part is particularly interesting to me, as I heard a story about Rodwell coming up with a means to locate a Jack in a specific auction involving a three-suit opening years ago, where he devised a system-notes change to allow for this, but this required 40 pages of extra notes, as a result of which he was apparently sanctiooned by teammates with a penalty of no new ideas for six months. This may explain the groin injuries?

Notable, as well, from this article is that apparently the team involved was called the "Blues," which is a rather derogatory term for older bridge players but also is ironic in the sense of the Blue Team.

This gets even better, as the "Blues" lost to Italy in the match where Rodwell got the groin injury and scanning for Jacks was involved. Ironic.

[straube]

 kenrexford, on 2012-April-17, 11:44, said:

http://www.evertonfc...9/scan-for-jack

Apparently, a few things can be said about scanning for Jacks.

First, this might be related to groin injuries.

Second, and very strangely, Rodwell is involved. This part is particularly interesting to me, as I heard a story about Rodwell coming up with a means to locate a Jack in a specific auction involving a three-suit opening years ago, where he devised a system-notes change to allow for this, but this required 40 pages of extra notes, as a result of which he was apparently sanctiooned by teammates with a penalty of no new ideas for six months. This may explain the groin injuries?

Notable, as well, from this article is that apparently the team involved was called the "Blues," which is a rather derogatory term for older bridge players but also is ironic in the sense of the Blue Team.

This gets even better, as the "Blues" lost to Italy in the match where Rodwell got the groin injury and scanning for Jacks was involved. Ironic.

Funny link. But let's say I've figured out all of partner's AKQs at the point of 5D. Will I want (more often than not) 5H to play or to ask for jacks?

[kenrexford]

 straube, on 2012-April-17, 11:49, said:

Funny link. But let's say I've figured out all of partner's AKQs at the point of 5D. Will I want (more often than not) 5H to play or to ask for jacks?

Although you have not said so, I assume that you are scanning with heart agreed? If so, then it seems rather simple to me, even though I know nothiong about scanning for Jacks or scanning in general. If you have all of the info you need except the question of Jacks, then your possible end contracts are 5♥, 6♥, 6NT, or a grand. If 5♠ scans for Jacks rather than 5♥, you should have space to unwind Jacks, I would think. So, skip the step that is trumps?

If this sequence of scans is done without trumps being set, then I have no idea.

[straube]

Thanks. Unfortunately trump hasn't been set. My experience is that I'm usually more afraid of getting too high than running out of room asking about jacks, but I know this goes counter to what most relayers are playing.

[kenrexford]

 straube, on 2012-April-17, 12:48, said:

Thanks. Unfortunately trump hasn't been set. My experience is that I'm usually more afraid of getting too high than running out of room asking about jacks, but I know this goes counter to what most relayers are playing.

This reminds me of a sequence years ago playing a strong diamond system, where partner's last bid was 5♠ and yet I had no idea what trumps were. I hate not knowing what the heck is going on, but I can live with that if partner is captain. But, if partner as captain also has no way to stop the train, this is really too much for me.

[straube]

 kenrexford, on 2012-April-17, 13:21, said:

This reminds me of a sequence years ago playing a strong diamond system, where partner's last bid was 5♠ and yet I had no idea what trumps were. I hate not knowing what the heck is going on, but I can live with that if partner is captain. But, if partner as captain also has no way to stop the train, this is really too much for me.

We can stop, but currently the first step is a relay. My impression is that scanning for the jack is most useful with a grand in mind.

[kenrexford]

 straube, on 2012-April-17, 13:53, said:

We can stop, but currently the first step is a relay. My impression is that scanning for the jack is most useful with a grand in mind.

From my experience, one possible solution might work for you. This solution came up in the context of the old Precision Greek-letter asking bids.

Normally, no one wants to play 5♥ if you can get out at 4♥; that part seems easy enough. So, suppose that you are in some scanning sequence where as captain you plan on a heart contract but where you would want 5♥ to be a scan if partner's anticipated scan answering would be 5♦ at some point. In that scenario, you could play that a jump to 5♥ is an anticipatory scan in the event of this sequence developing, or that a jump to 5♥ is non-forcing unless some holding exists.

That may sound confusing, but let me give you a simpler example of the concept, and you may get it sufficiently to translate for your purposes. Suppose that you play RKCB and hearts are agreed. Suppose, further, that a 5♠ response (two with the Queen) would for some reason be insufficient for slam. That would suck. If you ask, you may end up forced to slam when you know slam is failing. One solution for that possible problem would be to have a call of 5♥ instead of 4NT be a slam invite, asking partner to pass with two keys and the Queen (or worse), to accept with three keys, and to show something interesting with a better hand (3 with the Queen or 4).

So also, in a scanning situation, it seems that perhaps a well-timned use of a jump to 5♥ (or maybe 5♠) might solve in an anticipatory manner the risk of the sequence getting to this point. Whichever holding the jump to 5♥ shows, the scan-to-5♥ shows the other.

[Flameous]

That's pretty neat. I will definitely see how that could be used. Though it does seem extremely hard to make some rules for that situation since after 4♦ there might be multiple routes, not just two, to 5♦ where after some you might want to play 5♥ and after others not.

[the hog]

 straube, on 2012-April-17, 11:20, said:

So we're using a parity scan method that awm gave us. We find out relay points and then even/odd for top 3 honors of each suit, then show whether our first odd suit contains the king. Trouble is that we often wind up at 5D or 5H by the time we're done. Is scanning for jacks really worth giving up the ability to sign off in the relay step? I think we might ask more often, if we knew we were likely to be able to play in this relay step.

Yes it is. You need to plan your relay asks more carefully and anticipate where an unwanted response will take you.

[straube]

 the hog, on 2012-April-17, 19:10, said:

Yes it is. You need to plan your relay asks more carefully and anticipate where an unwanted response will take you.

Thanks. The relay asks inquire information in the same order each time...and we often don't get an accurate picture of partner's hand until the king parity question is answered at the end. So basically, it takes as much room as it takes.

I very much prefer it (still) to denial cue bidding.

One thought I had was that we've incorporated an RKC alternative to parity cue bidding. As of now, we use the cheapest step to the longest step to set trump based on the slave hand's longest to shortest suit. I think it might make more sense to use RKC from clubs to spades, because (obviously) we have less room to decide between 5C and 6C than we do 5S and 6S.

So let's say partner showes 4513 at 3D. Then...

3H-asks QPs, then we go to parity cue bidding
3S-RKC clubs
3N-to play
4C-RKC diamonds
4D-terminator puppet
4H-RKC hearts
4S-RKC spades

[MickyB]

Definitely need to be able to ask for jacks. Say you work out pard's major honours early, perhaps because you have almost all the relay points. Are you ever able to bid something other than step one to skip a step or two on the relay? Eg bidding partner's singleton? Or do you need that as a sign-off?

[straube]

 MickyB, on 2012-April-17, 20:17, said:

Definitely need to be able to ask for jacks. Say you work out pard's major honours early, perhaps because you have almost all the relay points. Are you ever able to bid something other than step one to skip a step or two on the relay? Eg bidding partner's singleton? Or do you need that as a sign-off?

S1 continues the relay. Other steps are sign off. Yeah, I'm getting the answer I sort of expected (jacks are important), but still concerned that we end pretty high. Most of our jack asks are starting at 5H or 5S...and we have asked before and it has occasionally been helpful, but as a practical matter, not very often. Here's an example auction for us...

1C-2C, minors
2D-3D, 3154
3H-4C, 7 QPs
4D-4H, 0 or 2 top diamonds
4S-5C, 1 or 3 top clubs, 0 or two top spades
5D-5S, no heart A or K, no club king

At this point, we might infer (depending on opener's hand) xxx x AQxxx Axxx

This particular auction ends higher than usual and we're a bit disadvantaged (compared to awm) that our base for relay points is 5, but it's not unusual for us to "get" partner's cards by the point of 5D, 5H, or 5S.

So I really do have a reason for asking whether scanning for jacks is very practical for us.

I mean, possible solutions include increasing our base (not doing that as we like to get in a GF as quickly as possible) or having responder's first answer for QPs be 5 or 6....but we tried that idea and then opener sometimes just gives up but other times has to re-ask and now we wind up high again.

[Zelandakh]

 straube, on 2012-April-17, 11:49, said:

Funny link. But let's say I've figured out all of partner's AKQs at the point of 5D. Will I want (more often than not) 5H to play or to ask for jacks?

Here is a quick and dirty solution - use 5♥ to play and 5NT as the jack ask. Responses should show the lowest jack not held. Bidding a new suit now should ask for the jack of that suit. You can choose whether this ask should be non-forcing (only allows asking for trump jack) or forcing (have to play either 6NT or a grand). Probably forcing would be best since it would be pretty unusual to be asking for a jack on any hand where 6NT is not playable. So summary:-

... - 5♦ - 5NT
==============
6NT = all 4 jacks
6♠ = ♣J, ♦J and ♥J, no ♠J.
6♥ = ♣J, ♦J, no ♥J
... - 6♠ = asks for ♠J
... - ... - 6NT = no ♠J
... - ... - 7♣ = ♠J
6♦ = ♣J, no ♦J
... - 6♥ = asks for ♥J
... - ... - 6♠ = ♥J, no ♠J
... - ... - 6NT = no ♥J
... - ... - 7♣ = ♥J and ♠J
... - 6♠ = asks for ♠J
... - ... - 6NT = no ♠J
... - ... - 7♣ = ♠J
6♣ = no ♣J
... - 6♦ = asks for ♦J
... - ... - 6♥ = ♦J, no ♥J
... - ... - ... - 6♠ = asks for ♠J
... - ... - ... - ... - 6NT = no ♠J
... - ... - ... - ... - 7♣ = ♠J
... - ... - 6♠ = ♦J, ♥J, no ♠J
... - ... - 6NT = no ♦J
... - ... - 7♣ = ♦J, ♥J and ♠J
... - 6♥ = asks for ♥J
... - ... - 6♠ = ♥J, no ♠J
... - ... - 6NT = no ♥J
... - ... - 7♣ = ♥J and ♠J
... - 6♠ = asks for ♠J
... - ... - 6NT = no ♠J
... - ... - 7♣ = ♠J

I use the same structure in the equivalent (very rare!) auction for my system.

[kenrexford]

Jack ask bidding is dumb ask stuff. I prefer denial jack ask, which i call ask hole bidding.