32519, on 2012-January-06, 23:56, said:
I have seen enough disasters such as this one to realise that Kickback is an important toy to have in your partnership agreement. You can place the blame on either partner for bidding mishaps such as these. In the end it matters not who takes the blame. The auction ended in 6 off to Aces. If the ♠ fit was shown the auction could still have ended in 5♠.
My personal opinion is that BI should learn both Kickback and ECKB over Hearts (bidding judgement/discipline will also be helpful). Eventually they will move on to Advanced.
1♥ = Natural
2♣ = 2/1 Game Force
3♥ = Extra length/strength
4NT = RKCB
5♠ = 2 keycards plus the trump queen
6♥ = Disaster! 2 keycards missing
My first thought about this hand is that if you're going to bid this badly, it seems almost unfair that you might have a convention in place to allow you to be rescued! (My second thought was that they probably got a black suit lead, made 12 tricks and went away thinking they'd done great...)
I play a lot with "I"s from the B/I range and many of them can't even get their heads around when it is right to use Blackwood or if I'm lucky, RKCB. (I may know that north in the example above, for instance!) So I'd be very reluctant to give them problems like when a 4S bid may or may not be ace-asking for hearts vs natural vs some other meaning.