[mgoetze]

Higher skill levels = stronger player, so option 1 ("a strong positive") means that stronger players are much more likely to consider a given 4NT call to be ace-asking.

For purposes of this poll, please consider only players who have learned at least one convention where 4NT is somehow ace-asking (i.e. ignore absolute beginners), and assume a context where some form of Blackwood/RKCB is played in some sequences (i.e. you are not asking Fantoni/Nunes about their system).

[Free]

In some cases weaker players will say 4NT is ace asking while advanced players will use it for something else. But the difference is marginal if you ignore absolute beginners.

[Siegmund]

There was a time the answer was pretty strongly negative. But at present, the RKC disease is so heavily upon the advanced players of the world, in some ways the habit of using it on the way to almost every slam is stronger now than it ever was in the past. I voted "no significant" - used about twice as much as it should be at all levels of the game.

Admittedly I have something of a bee in my bonnet about people who refuse to continue to cuebid at the 5-level after being so happy to use it at the 4-level.

[Cyberyeti]

With spades as the agreed suit, not a lot of difference, with any other suit agreed, experts may be using kickback/minorwood or something other than 4N as the ace ask, so a more significant difference.

[han]

Among forum posters there is a positive corrolation. There is a large group of posters that think the best way to look like an expert is to say that RKC is overused, and that the best way to become a better slam bidder is not to use blackwood for a year. They overly complicate simple hands by cuebidding a few more times than necessary, often doing so at the 5-level.

I did not include mike777 in my dataset.

[han]

By the way, I may not have been entirely honest in my comment and vote because I think the question in itself is entirely uninteresting. It makes me wonder if asking such questions is also a sign of the wannabe-expert-forum-poster.

[mgoetze]

han, on 2010-November-19, 09:02, said:

It makes me wonder if asking such questions is also a sign of the wannabe-expert-forum-poster.

I would like to make it clear that I only reason I even post anything in the A&E forum is that I consider myself "advanced" by BBO standards. I do not necessarily consider myself "advanced" by other standards, and I do not consider myself "expert" by any standard.