[32519]

The Gerber Convention was created by the late John Gerber in 1938. It has since been superseded by Minorwood, Redwood and RKCB. One could make an argument to include Gerber being superseded by cue-bidding as well (encompassing Serious 3NT, Non-serious 3NT and Last Train to Clarksville [LTTC]). Yet there are players still playing the Gerber convention.

We have a small club in the town where I live. Two of the women players here still play their version of Gerber. They swear by it and simply aren’t interested in switching to anything more modern. Both are in fact competent players, though certainly not world-class by any stretch of the imagination.

I have kibitzed many BBO Live Broadcasts where the commentators often make reference to how obsolete the Gerber convention is. For the benefit of newcomers to bridge (and the two women from my hometown) let us tackle Gerber OBJECTIVELY. Let us start unravelling this topic in as much depth as possible –
1.) Giving clear concise explanations as to why Gerber is so outdated.
Then we go on to the following –
2.) Providing better methods to ask for aces and keycards.
3.) Providing a whole list of better uses for the 4♣ bid.

Hopefully the end result of this thread will raise the standard of play amongst bridge newbie’s. I certainly intend passing the info on to the two women in our club.

I know that this is a much hated convention, but please respond objectively.

Thanking you all in advance.

[32519]

So then what is this version of Gerber that the two women from my hometown play? They call it CRO (Colour / Rank / Odd). This is how their version works:
After a 4♣ Ace ask, responses are as follows –
4♦ = 0 or 4 Aces
4♥ = 1 or 3 Aces
4♠ = 2 Aces of the same colour
4NT = 2 Aces of the same rank
5♣ = 2 odd Aces (this last response is absolutely awful as a whole level of bidding space has been lost)

King asks and responses are the same as regular Gerber except that 5♦ becomes the King ask where the Ace response was 5♣ showing 2 odd Aces.

[helene_t]

It is not such a bad idea to have an ace-asking bid in situations where 4NT would be quantitative or when 4NT would take away too much bidding space. Now 4♥ and 4♠ often sound natural and besides they may take away too much bidding space, also.

Using 4♣ as a keycard ask always allows us to stop in 4NT. So if you can afford not to use 4♣ for any other purpose, then Gerber is fine. Of course this is a big "if".

[gnasher]

The only significant disadvantage of Gerber (or Keycard Gerber when a suit is agreed) is that you can't use 4♣ for something else. All decisions about methods involve a tradeoff between the benefits of playing the method and the cost of giving up something else.

The cost of playing Gerber varies according to the auction. It's reasonable, for example, to use 1NT-4♣ as Gerber, because there are lots of other bids available for showing other hands. I usually play that as Gerber, and I use it about once a year.

In most other sequences a 4♣ bid is more useful for some other purpose. For example, it is a bad idea to play 1♦-1♠;3♦-4♣ as a Keycard ask, because it has more value as a cue-bid.

The same considerations apply to Kickback, Minorwood, and indeed normal 4NT Keycard. The cost of playing these is generally less than the cost of playing Gerber, because the ace-asking bid is higher and therefore less useful for other purposes. However, many players would still consider that using 1♣-1♠;3♣-4♣ or 1♣-1♠;3♣-4♣;4♦ as ace-asking is wrong, because they're too useful in their normal sense. Some people wouldn't play 1♣-1♠;3♣-4♣;4♥-4NT as Keycard either, because they find it more useful to play it as rolling (or "D/I"). Almost nobody plays 2NT-4NT as Keycard, because it's much more valuable as a natural bid.

This isn't purely an objective decision. If your style often involves cue-bidding and consultative sequences, you will be less inclined to replace one of your cue-bids with an ace-ask. If your style often involves one partner taking control and asking for keycards, you will be more inclined to play lower-level keycard asks.

So, to say that Gerber in general is a bad convention makes no more sense than saying that Keycard in general is a bad convention. It depends on the sequence, and on the partnership's preferences. I can well believe that the people in your local club who play Gerber would never cue-bid even if they could. For them, playing Gerber in lots of auctions makes perfect sense.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2011-December-13, 07:55

[helene_t]

 gnasher, on 2011-December-13, 07:52, said:

I can well believe that the people in your local club who play Gerber would never cue-bid even if they could. For them, playing Gerber in lots of auctions makes perfect sense.

Yes but they may use 4♣ as a natural bid in some sequences.

I have seen these kind of club players have misunderstandings in auctions like
(2♥)-2♠-(3♥)-4♣
and
1♠-2♣
3♠-4♣
etc.

I am inclined to saying that if they can't manage a "4♣ is sometimes gerber and sometimes natural" agreement without tons of misunderstandings, it would be better to play it as always natural than as always gerber.

But "4♣ is always natural" still creates a lot of uncertainty of whether it is forcing or not. The advice I would prefer to give is that unless something else is blatantly obvious, they should take it as natural and forcing. But whether that is really the best advice for lower-range club players, I am not sure.

[manudude03]

To be honest, most of the hate towards gerber comes because of the users and the fact that the vast majority of users don't understand the objective of ace asking bids. In a way, ace asking bids are the last line of defense before committing to slam. What it does not tell you is whether or not you actually have 12 tricks (aces only take 1 trick on their own). Because of this, you need space to do some further investigation and playing gerber does not give you the necessary space needed to accomplish this. Meanwhile it is a rare occurrence that you can make slam opposite say 2 aces and not even to make 11 opposite 1, and the times they do come up, you probably weren't in a position to ask anyway. As such, blackwood (and ideally RKCB) is sufficient for this purpose.

As already mentioned, aces alone don't make slams. The reason people move to RKC is that the king (and queen) of trumps are very often very important cards for making slams. Gerber users usually end up having to choose between a suit quality slam try or just asking for aces and often loses out when both are important. Now there are some problems with playing 4NT as RKC. For one, you might not be able to control the auction opposite some responses, especially when you have agreed a minor. Also suppose you have agreed hearts as trumps and you bid 4NT. If partner bids 5D, how do you ask for the ♥Q when it's critical for the slam? One solution is to play Kickback. That way, 4S would be RKC for hearts and the responses will always either tell you about the ♥Q or leave you room to ask below 5♥. There is a slight problem with playing kickback in the minors, that is that you might occasionally want to crash out in 4NT (especially at MPs) and so playing kickback over clubs, you have the same potential problem with 4D-4S (playing kickback over diamonds, I would recommend you make 5C the Q ask even over 4S).

Kickback does come with it's own problems. When you have agreed one suit and the suit which would be kickback, it is very vulnerable to misunderstandings. Take a simple auction like 1H-2D-3D-4H. Is 4H a signoff/picture bid, splinter, or kickback? It could feasibly be any of those and so kickback requires some very detailed agreements at times. Minorwood simplifies these problems as you bid 4m to ask for key cards. However, it also takes some firm agreements as to when it is RKC and when it is simply a slam-going hand, or even a crash out retreat. (in 2/1, an auction like 1S-2C-2H-3C-3H-4C). But wait, haven't we gone back to RKC gerber essentially over clubs? Well, yes, but only over clubs. Now that we have freed up the 4C bid for the other suits, we may as well fill it again.

As I said up above, ace asking is the last line of defense and doesn't tell us if we have 12 tricks. How about cuebidding. It certainly fills in the gaps better than gerber. Note that even if you play first round controls only, you are already at least on par with those playing gerber. Playing the (far superior imo) method of cuebidding 1st+2nd round controls simultaneously, a lot of gaps which may prevent a slam from making get filled. After all, aren't we all a lot happier when we find out partner has the King in a suit we have AQJTx? One concern I'm often asked is how is partner supposed to differentiate between 1st and 2nd round controls, well, we are still below 4NT, we can just bid RKC to sort it out later.

As for jumps to 4C? After all, it seems like a waste to skip the entire 3-level when it can otherwise be used. The "natural" way to play it is splinters. After all, it is a feature which can be difficult to show otherwise and the key to making thin slams is often finding no wastage (finding xxx opposite a stiff etc). One final possibility for a replacement for 4C is having it as a natural slam try (particularly useful in quick auctions like 1S-3S-4C). You will need to agree what is a good holding though. xx is pretty bad opposite KJxx, decent opposite Axxx and gold opposite AKxx, so you would have to decide what qualifies as a natural slam try.

One last point that needs to be covered and that is 4C over NT. To be honest, gerber is a reasonable treatment here provided you know what you are going to do with the responses. This is mainly because of the need of a quantitative 4NT.

[Vampyr]

 manudude03, on 2011-December-13, 08:33, said:

One last point that needs to be covered and that is 4C over NT. To be honest, gerber is a reasonable treatment here provided you know what you are going to do with the responses. This is mainly because of the need of a quantitative 4NT.

A lot of people like 4♣ as pick-a-major. I do, and play Texas transfers, so 4♠ is available as ace-asking. To be honest, I can't remember its ever coming up.

But anyway all this Gerber-bashing gets on my nerves. Why can't you people live and let live?

[Free]

Hating Gerber is primairily caused by overuse, abuse, and wrong use of the convention. Like manudude explains, it's basically a check if your opponents can take 2 Aces at the start. This makes it a rare convention, because many times you have a suit where opps may take AK instead of 2 Aces in different suits. Many people use it in too many cases (for example 1NT-2♣-2M-4♣), some people abuse the convention to play "4♣ always Gerber", and others use it when they hold all Aces and want to know about Kings.

After 1NT openings I don't mind playing Gerber, we have lots of space to describe all kinds of hands, that we don't really need 4♣ for anything. If I don't play Gerber, I play 4♣ as a transfer to 4♥. As a consequence 1NT-4♥ is natural signoff, which works quite nicely after weak and mini NT.

After 2NT openings I rarely play Gerber because the bidding space can be used much better here. I have 2 different meanings I like: I either play it as a transfer ♦ (weak/GF/SI), or I play it as a SI hand with 6+♥.

[mycroft]

I play "not-on-your-life" Gerber, except with regular partners (and sometimes, not with them). I do that because the number of times it's needed and other methods won't work are hugely overshadowed by the number of times people use it because "Blackwood is how you bid slams, and Gerber is lower than Blackwood" - not because it's a bad convention.

However, spending some months without an ace-asking bid at all is very good practise for "how to bid slams" - yeah, eventually one figures out that there are ones that need to find out about aces-in-groups, but most of the time, either no, this one doesn't, or yes, it does - after you find out the other stuff. Once that is clear, sure, bring back Ole Black (and the G word, if you really have to).

I do like watching partner squirm because they "need" to bid Gerber, and they don't have it...if it is the once-a-year they have 8-solid-off-the-ace in a minor and second-round controls in the rest, then I'll apologise after the hand.

If you do play ONTO Gerber (Over NT Only), the partnership really needs to know the answers to "after Stayman and response, 4♣/4NT is..." and "after a (2-level) transfer, 4♣/4NT is..."

[kenberg]

I like Frank Sinatra, Starbucks coffee and the Gerber convention. Those who don't can not listen, not drink it, not play it.

As mentioned above, if you play G you need to decide about auctions such as 1NT-2♣-2♠-4♣ and 1NT-2♥-2♠-4♣. My preference is to play the first as RKCG and the second as a splinter.

So consider 1NT-2♣-2♠: Might I not sometimes have a spade fit and a likely source of tricks, and at other times a four card heart suit and invitational values? 4♣ in the first case, 4NT in the other.

Neither auction comes up every day. If I ever plan to take on Meckwell, maybe I need more advanced tools, but these seem to do me fine for now.

[manudude03]

 kenberg, on 2011-December-13, 11:45, said:

So consider 1NT-2♣-2♠: Might I not sometimes have a spade fit and a likely source of tricks, and at other times a four card heart suit and invitational values? 4♣ in the first case, 4NT in the other.

What is 1NT-2♣-2♠-3♥? seems a little redundant. I can certainly understand it better over a 2H response if 2S after is NF.

[kenberg]

 manudude03, on 2011-December-13, 11:56, said:

What is 1NT-2♣-2♠-3♥? seems a little redundant. I can certainly understand it better over a 2H response if 2S after is NF.

3♥ is indeed acceptance of spades and a slam try. And could often be useful. But there certainly are hands where by the time I get to 2♠ I want to be in 6♠ if we have the keys, and not otherwise. In theory I could want to move more slowly, and I suppose that is the OP's point, but in practice I often just go for it.

[whereagles]

My chief complaint against the gerber is not so much it's overuse/abuse on unsuitable hands but rather that people tend to enthousiastic and extend the concept of 4C ace asking to various other situations, without even understanding what they're doing. Then they either forget what 4C is or have a mix-up and disaster occurs. It's bad publicity for the game.

[nigel_k]

Gerber is bad if it prevents people moving on to more sophisticated and accurate methods. But the vast majority of regular Gerber users are never going to do that and their results would be worse, not better, if they just gave up using Gerber. Anyway nobody who plays Minorwood has any business criticising those who play Gerber.

[Cthulhu D]

What's wrong with Minorwood? I see why Gerber can be easily mis-used (I play it only on over an inital opening of NT), but was considering minorwood as it sort of made sense maybe so I'm curious to know what's wrong with it. Aside from seemingly being easy to misunderstand which is a big negative.

[32519]

 gnasher, on 2011-December-13, 07:52, said:

So, to say that Gerber in general is a bad convention makes no more sense than saying that Keycard in general is a bad convention. It depends on the sequence, and on the partnership's preferences. I can well believe that the people in your local club who play Gerber would never cue-bid even if they could. For them, playing Gerber in lots of auctions makes perfect sense.

You are absolutely 100% spot on with your assessment here. I cannot ever remember these two cue-bidding above the 3 level. In a recent inter-club match my partner and I were the only pair to reach a thin slam which made. The key to finding it was via cue-bidding. A side suit King had to be located to get there. Declarer now had a second suit which would provide a source of tricks.

[Free]

 nigel_k, on 2011-December-13, 13:02, said:

Anyway nobody who plays Minorwood has any business criticising those who play Gerber.

This is a ridiculous statement. We normally set a minor as trumps at 4-level after which we play Kickback Turbo. However, in some cases it's useful to be able to just ask for keycards, so we decided to treat jump raises in a GF auction to 4m as minorwood (rare, but after a strong 1♣ opening it occurs now and then). So I do play minorwood - big deal! What makes this treatment so aweful that I'm not allowed to criticise anyone who plays Gerber in your opinion?

[Antrax]

I'm honestly not sure what the criticism against Gerber is. I used to think it's because people get confused between a 4♣ Gerber and other things, but I see that's not the point being made. We don't often cue bid in NT slam auctions (should we?) so I don't see the risk of confusion there. Xwood conventions usually apply when a suit fit has been established, so unless the point is you should never ask for aces when looking for an NT slam, I don't see how they could serve as a replacement.
As far as "detailed agreements" go, if we didn't establish a fit and 4♣ is a jump, then it's Gerber. Not too confusing, and pretty rare as people mentioned, but I don't remember the last time I needed to introduce clubs at the 4-level in a misfit or NT auction.
So, kudos to the OP, but I'm afraid I still don't see the objective case against Gerber. Is there some hand where the 4♣ cue bid (in an NT auction) or natural bid is sorely missed?

[gordontd]

.Deleted

[Zelandakh]

 helene_t, on 2011-December-13, 08:06, said:

I am inclined to saying that if they can't manage a "4♣ is sometimes gerber and sometimes natural" agreement without tons of misunderstandings, it would be better to play it as always natural than as always gerber.

If they (accidentally) play the stop or alert cards, or if they look meaningfully at partner, then 4C is Gerber; if not then it is natural. Is this not obvious? As far as Gerber goes, it is a convention I have never liked since I cannot see the need for it even over 1NT let alone in other situations. However, my very first team mates from university - a French pair - used Gerber on pretty much every slam deal and swore by it. And they did not miss many slams, certainly alot less than our opponents.

To the OP, Blackwood with CRO responses is properly called Roman Blackwood so I would imagine that this version of Gerber could reasonably be described as Roman Gerber. This is a method that had some brief popularity about 30 years ago. The biggest problem I see most Gerber players getting into is not knowing what is the subsequent king ask and which bids are sign offs. If you have that well understood then Gerber is adequate for the vast majority of B/I partnerships.