Slam bidding

Slam bidding involves a stack of conventions for various situations. I list them from the general to the specific.

Italian control bids

The famous Italian Blue team devised the Italian style of control bidding. A control can be 1st-round (ace or void) or 2nd-round (king or singleton). It is more important to show controls at low steps. Bypassing a step denies all controls in that suit.

Kickback philosophy

Traditionally, new suits above 3NT are reserved for control bidding by default. Consequently, conventional notrumps ask quantitative questions. These conventions work perfectly for spades but sometimes impose problems on minor suits.

Kickback originally applies to RKCB. The lowest control bid above 4X swaps with 4NT. This approach can be generalized to other conventional notrumps, such as (non-)serious 3NT and Turbo 4NT.

When 4NT swaps with a control bid, I suggest inverting the resulting 4NT to deny controls in the kickback suit. This agreement helps playing 4NT when lacking controls.

Agreements

• Kickback RKCB 1430
  • Optional Minorwood
• Kickback non-serious 3NT (3♠ for hearts)

Optional agreements

• Kickback Turbo for minor suits
  • Control bidding supersedes Optional Minorwood
• BTU 7-KCB for double fits
• BTU control asking RKCB (conflicts with Exclusion RKCB)
• Exclusion RKCB (conflicts with BTU control asking RKCB)