[mike777]

You are in a slam auction. Do you control bid and show shortness in partner's suit?

[DavidKok]

I do not.

[P_Marlowe]

It is not the first control that gets shown.

[mikeh]

mike777, on 2026-November-03, 11:34, said:

You are in a slam auction. Do you control bid and show shortness in partner's suit?

Slams require sources of tricks. If your cuebid in what partner is hoping to be a source of tricks could either be shortness or a high card control: I hope your partner is a great guesser!

Say I hold a suit of AQxxx, which is not going to be trump. You cue bid your control in that suit. Should I (a) upgrade because we probably have 4 or even. 5 tricks in the suit because you have the King or (b) downgrade because I likely have a lot of work to create even a second trick in the suit when you have a stiff.

Btw, you can have the best of both worlds. If you bypass this suit in your control bidding but cue bid it later, the delayed control is shortness.

Of course, to benefit from this approach it’s helpful to avoid using keycard as your main way of showing slam interest. I know nobody listens, but keycard is to keep you out of a slam when you have established you have the requisite values but are off too many keycards/trump queen or to get you to grand when you can see 13 tricks so long as you’re not missing a keycard/trump queen. So many players use keycard to announce slam interest and, by doing so, fail to establish that their side has both the requisite values and no suit off the first two tricks.

[mike777]

I posted this after listening to Gavin Wolpert's 2 hour discussion on high level bidding decisions when the opponents make high level preemptive bids. BTW he emphasized even top players have difficulty making the winning decisions,so definitely make preemptive jumps against your opponents.

It surprised me when, as a side discussion, he mentioned we should control bid shortness in partner's suit. He mentioned teaching this and the push back , strong push back, he gets from his students. He mentioned this has never been an at the table issue for him but granted there probably is some hand out there that might be an issue.

He felt very strongly about this teaching point.

Edit

He Did not mention anything about waiting and delayed control bidding partner's suit later.

[P_Marlowe]

I have no idea, what Gavin Wolpert's reason are, but I can try to come up with 1-2 reasons, even if I
dont agree with the approach

#1 what constitutes as p suit?
If you happen to play short / bal. club, unbal. diamonds, do you count clubs as p suit?
If p is weak, limited to 6...10, is it relevant to avoid making a cue in his 4 card suit, he introduced
at an earlier stage? In this scenario, the cue works as a come on signal.

#2 when does it matter, how often? To matter, it would be first suit you have to make the cue.
If it is low freq. anyway, and if you can deduce sometimes, what he has (own length / holding),
reducing the freq. even more, it may make sense to stick to a simpler approach. Freq. is also lower,
if you are a non professional.

#3 Also is it the way HE playes, or does he think, that his students have a better chance to improve in this
specific area.

[jillybean]

mikeh, on 2026-November-03, 13:44, said:

Slams require sources of tricks. If your cuebid in what partner is hoping to be a source of tricks could either be shortness or a high card control: I hope your partner is a great guesser!

Say I hold a suit of AQxxx, which is not going to be trump. You cue bid your control in that suit. Should I (a) upgrade because we probably have 4 or even. 5 tricks in the suit because you have the King or (b) downgrade because I likely have a lot of work to create even a second trick in the suit when you have a stiff.

Btw, you can have the best of both worlds. If you bypass this suit in your control bidding but cue bid it later, the delayed control is shortness.

Of course, to benefit from this approach it’s helpful to avoid using keycard as your main way of showing slam interest. I know nobody listens, but keycard is to keep you out of a slam when you have established you have the requisite values but are off too many keycards/trump queen or to get you to grand when you can see 13 tricks so long as you’re not missing a keycard/trump queen. So many players use keycard to announce slam interest and, by doing so, fail to establish that their side has both the requisite values and no suit off the first two tricks.

Some do listen! Though old habits are hard to break, especially when everyone around you is still smoking.
Cue bidding is rarely taught; 4NT is universally the default method taught for slam bidding. Heck, even my latest, greatest partner does it. We discussed a hand the other day where I argued that a Club cue shouldn't have been bypassed, and he disagreed.
He ended up discussing the hand with a local internationalist, who initially bypassed the Club cue himself but eventually came to the realization that showing the Club control was correct.
My partner was man enough to come back and say, "You were right." This one could be a keeper!

MikeH said:

If you bypass this suit in your control bidding but cue bid it later, the delayed control is shortness.

[pescetom]

In our style of control bidding we always bid controls up the line, including shortage in partner's suit, which he can usually figure out in time. By no coincidence we play Turbo and Queen check inline with the sequence and keycard is off for a player who already made a control-bid.
Some discretion does creep in once above Turbo, it may be preferable to skip a third level control if it is probably not useful and/or we have a last useful chance to bid a first/second level control instead.

[WasWinM]

pescetom, on 2026-November-04, 10:52, said:

In our style of control bidding we always bid controls up the line, including shortage in partner's suit, which he can usually figure out in time. By no coincidence we play Turbo and Queen check inline with the sequence and keycard is off for a player who already made a control-bid.
Some discretion does creep in once above Turbo, it may be preferable to skip a third level control if it is probably not useful and/or we have a last useful chance to bid a first/second level control instead.

Have you thought that through? Not only does it require controls for slam, but also tricks. Being able to show a secondary helping card in partner's suit may well be more important that a singleton or void.

[akwoo]

jillybean, on 2026-November-04, 08:58, said:

Cue bidding is rarely taught; 4NT is universally the default method taught for slam bidding.

There's a genuine good reason for this.

When you have zero hand building skills, cue bidding will never be helping you with slam bidding. You're getting information about individual controls that you just can't keep all in your head and use in context. 4N is also of limited use, but there are at least some situations where it does some good.

Most bridge players will never acquire any significant hand building skills. If you try any rule for when they should be in slam other than 33 points (however they count points for distribution) and missing no more than one key card, that rule will be more than they can apply at the table.

[pescetom]

 WasWinM, on 2026-November-04, 11:04, said:

Have you thought that through? Not only does it require controls for slam, but also tricks. Being able to show a secondary helping card in partner's suit may well be more important that a singleton or void.

Thought through and played. Hopefully we have some clear ideas about tricks before control bidding, we go as slow as possible. Non-serious helps with suit quality too. It is obviously a mechanical truth-telling style of control bidding with little space for initiatives, beneficial or not (although it gets more discretional towards the end, where you might skip a useless shortage or even bid a useful Q as a K).
This has its advantages and disadvantages of course. It does drill down effectively in the limited space available and the classic bugbears like king opposite singleton or shortage opposite partner's suit tend to become evident in time. I worry more about Turbo occasionally wrongsiding information and being in the dark about trump Queen in small slam decisions (although there are ways to fix that).

[mikeh]

WasWinM, on 2026-November-04, 11:04, said:

Have you thought that through? Not only does it require controls for slam, but also tricks. Being able to show a secondary helping card in partner's suit may well be more important that a singleton or void.

I have no idea how partner can figure out that his AQJxx is worth 2 tricks or 5 tricks after you make an early cue bid of that suit. I think you’re deluding yourself. Maybe give us an example.

[WasWinM]

mikeh, on 2026-November-04, 13:40, said:

I have no idea how partner can figure out that his AQJxx is worth 2 tricks or 5 tricks after you make an early cue bid of that suit. I think you’re deluding yourself. Maybe give us an example.

Did you misread my post? I am in agreement.

[jillybean]

akwoo, on 2026-November-04, 11:37, said:

There's a genuine good reason for this.

When you have zero hand building skills, cue bidding will never be helping you with slam bidding. You're getting information about individual controls that you just can't keep all in your head and use in context. 4N is also of limited use, but there are at least some situations where it does some good.

Most bridge players will never acquire any significant hand building skills. If you try any rule for when they should be in slam other than 33 points (however they count points for distribution) and missing no more than one key card, that rule will be more than they can apply at the table.

Yes, yes—we should never mention cue bidding, Turbo, and Kickback to beginners. But once they have ventured from the beginners' class to the open room, we should be standing on our chairs shouting, 'There's more to this game!' Those who aren't interested/can't imagine it won't listen, but anyone who is will understand the rules they were taught are nothing more than training wheels.

[mike777]

I have sent in a follow up question on the issue to Gavin. Hopefully he will address the issue this evening and I can post it later.