[Zelandakh]

Kungsgeten, on 2014-February-28, 19:36, said:

I've been noticing the convention Optional RKCB in Bridge World's challenge the champ. I have not yet quite understood in what kind of situations this is used, but I guess one option would be to play it instead of Minorwood, and thus combining the ace ask and the slam invitational hand into the same bid?

I have been posting my variant of this on BBF for some time now (perhaps BW stole it from BBF?! ). You can combine it with cue bidding or Kickback as desired and can use it only when suit agreement is at the 4 level (and Minorwood when suit agreement was at the 3 level) or for all 4m bids in minor suit agreement auctions. If the agreed suit is diamonds and 4♣ is available for artificial purposes then I suggest 4♣ = starts a cue auction with 4♦ being the club cue; and 4♦ = optional RKCB.

[steve2005]

Minorwood always struck me as a poor convention. Even where there has been a trump agreement at 3-level or below I can think of lots of uses for a natural 4♣ but can only think of a splinter (which goes past 3N so may not always be useful) or a cue-bid for 4♦. So 4♦ seems a more logical RKCB ask for ♣, as long as you stick to only using when there has been trump agreement (which is sensible anyways)