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.

Moreover, when the trump suit is a minor, a voluntary 4♣♦ itself is a slam try. Move the conventional notrump further down to 4♣♦ reenables control bids in all side suits.

Turbo

Turbo is one of the most undervalued slam bidding tools. Turbo shows an even number of key cards rather than asking. It does a better job in minor suits than in major suits. I would recommend using Turbo in minor suits and RKCB in major suits.

Turbo has slightly lower resolution in key cards than RKCB, but it benefits minor suits in two ways. First, Turbo 4NT prevents bypassing our minor suit game, especially 5♣. Second, Turbo 4♣♦ leaves all control bids intact. This method allows checking controls as if for major suit slams.

Traditionally, the trump queen is shown at 5NT. If the trump suit is agreed before 3NT, move Turbo down to 4♣♦ and show the trump queen at 4NT. This way, we can check for the trump queen before reaching the minor suit game.

Optional agreements

• BTU 7-KCB for double fits
• BTU control asking RKCB (conflicts with Exclusion RKCB)
• Exclusion RKCB (conflicts with BTU control asking RKCB)