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Too “High” to Handle?

We referred yesterday to “7 Deadly Sins”. In bridge terms, today we look at number 8. Isn’t it great when your partner opens a game-forcing 2C and you have a clear positive response… no miserable hand with a couple of jacks necessitating a 2 negative…or even an “in-between” hand where you need to call 2 as a “waiting bid”. With today’s hand, you can announce to the world, well at least to those at your table, that you have a good hand of your own.

 

Not just a good hand but on many days, your partner will next call 3 except this is not one of them! They called the other major. Great. What now?

Surely, this is now all about aces and top trumps. Most of the time, your  partner will have AKQ or even if they do not have Q enough hearts to make the missing Q irrelevant. Indeed, give them AK of both major suits and the queen of either spades or diamonds along with both minor aces (remember, they did open 2. 4 aces, 2 kings and 1 queen is not that much to ask for!) and 7NT will roll home while 7 may not.

So, get out your favourite ace asking bid, a great time of course for Roman Key Card, and look forward to the response. Well, that may be your first reaction but “whooooa”! Hang on there just one minute. Have you noticed one thing about your very promising hand? It is rather lacking in key cards when hearts are trumps. Would you like to answer 2 questions before you make your bid?

Quiz Time (It's OK. Your opponents can wait!)

1.    How do you show 5 key cards in response to a 4NT ask? 5NT? Or does that show a certain number of key cards and a void? Do you know? Does your partner know?

2.    Can you handle all responses to 4NT when partner has less than 5 key cards? More specifically, what happens when they have only 2 key cards and the trump queen? Their response is 5! Ouch!

You cannot write down 5NT and hope partner will pass. They will not pass this king ask! What? How could a 2 opener have only 2 key cards? Well, they did not but they were pretty close to that number!

 

 

On this occasion, they held three and whether their reply would be 5 or 5, you could sign off in 5. Try this hand for South: KQJ   AQT7642  AQ 4 It’s certainly not quite as good as the hand South held but you would still hold your breath that someone would bid if you started at the one level. Note the actual South hand conforms to “the rule of 29” for 2 openers, while my made-up  one is a jack short.

Despite there being a safe response to Key Card here, 5 pairs out of 16 reached 6 and one other 6NT. A careful low diamond from East after the A had been led to 6 (suggesting a club switch) would ensure that the defence’s second trick would arrive before a second round of diamonds could be played. No pair bid and made 6.

There was at least one table where South had to guess. This board showed a weakness in any system where controls rather than aces were shown. In this deal, North showed 2 controls (ace= 2 king =1) and had North held one ace, then the slam would have made. No method is 100% perfect.

Resist Temptation: your bid is?

So, what should North bid over 3 as much as they would like to jump in to Key Card asking? They really should content themselves with 4 or maybe even better a 4 splinter. That splinter would not be great news for South but since they would now be going to 5 any way, they may as well use 4NT Key- Card on the way. The response would have been very disappointing but at least they could bale out at a playable level. This time, a 2 key card response would have been very welcome news! 

It is surely better, normally, for the really strong hand to do the asking if possible. It was possible here. As good as the North hand may seem with that 3 response, it still held no key cards. So, it was a time for care.

So, that “number 8 sin” is not being able to stand all responses to an ace-ask. North would normally have been lucky this time. (If North-South were not playing Key Card, the simple 2 ace response to Blackwood would have been a manageable 5.) Be careful before you use Key Card. When partner has responded 5 and hearts are trumps, there is no going back.

Richard Solomon

PS. Some use 4 as the key card ask once hearts have been agreed as trumps. That certainly avoids an embarrassing response to the key-card ask. 

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